


La Isla de los Espías

by cthulhu_is_chaotic_good



Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-19 16:31:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13708305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cthulhu_is_chaotic_good/pseuds/cthulhu_is_chaotic_good
Summary: Post-Scorpia Rising, Alex lives with the Pleasures but has trouble adjusting to a normal life, he defaults to looking at a job with the C.I.A. Spying, after all, leads to *some* good in the world. While Alex isn’t convinced of a black and white morality, he wants to live in a world where the few people he has left are as safe as they can be from terrorism and wars. Two missions in, he finds himself undercover on an island in Argentina, trying to find evidence of illicit dealings in order to take down an international arms dealer.The mission quickly goes South when Alex runs into an old acquaintance. Soon he is not so much a hidden spy as one  trying to stay alive and awake long enough to find a moment of independence.





	1. The Island

The director started his brief as soon as Alex sat down. “We’re looking into weapons development on a private island in the Atlantic Ocean, ostentatiously owned by Argentina with a history of British colonization. The island boasts a small town of fishermen, around 200 people, and a weapons development firm owns a factory. The firm is owned by an Irish man named Marvin Frobisher. Frobisher is rich, well connected, and has no allegiance to any counter. He works for anybody who will pay him. Morality doesn't cross his mind. There have been several investigations into Frobisher's dealings, from INTERPOL, the FBI, and our friends across the pond in Irish, British, and French Military Intelligence, but there's never been anything conclusive."

Alex shifted in his seat. So far, Frobisher sounded like a run of the mill out-for-himself multimillionaire. Alex had met plenty of them in his life.

The director continued. "We believe Iran has contracted Frobisher's firm to build weapons they would not be allowed to own by international treaty, and more importantly, for international security.”

“You could get Argentina to allow an invasion?” Alex knew as he said this that his solution was too simplistic. The more he learned about international affairs, the more convinced he was that that every world leader needed a good thrashing.

“Believe me, we wish it was that simple. Alex, you asked for a longer mission. Something to give you a chance to see how you liked undercover world, as an adult. Well, almost adult.” With a pointed tap next to Alex's birth date in his open file, the director continued.. “The C.I.A. is happy to have you work with us again, if you want it. This might be a few months undercover. It could be what you want.”

“In a couple months I’ll be 17.” Alex shrugged. “I’m almost there. And that Treaty on the Rights of the Child your lawyer quotes last time stopped applying once I turned 16 anyway.”

“Not that we would know,” the Director said. “The United States refused to sign the Declaration because of –“

“Politics?” Alex suggested wryly.

“The very thing. And now your mission, if you still want it, would be to go undercover until you have proof that these weapons are being purchased by Iran. What weapons is the factory producing, who paid for them, even finding bills of ownership tying specific names to the company. We suspect that Frobisher is not the one attached to the paperwork for Billing & Martin, but whoever is, a mark of ownership of the deal would help shut them and Frosbisher down.” The director grimaced. “Or at least slow him down. These types of men have money, and no shortage of international friends.”

“Alright.” Alex didn’t hesitate. There wasn’t a real point. It was what he wanted. What he thought about instead of classes, sitting in the back and daydreaming while the teacher tried to pull him back to Earth.

If there were people out there he could help, and a job that gave him a purpose, he wanted it.

\--AR---

Billing & Martin was looking for fluent English speakers willing to travel to remote locations for the job of weapon production and arms sales. Not stated in the terms was that they were looking for men without a family, no one who would be missed, or tracked down. No one who had families that could be held captive for secrets.

Not stated was that Billing & Martin managed to ‘accidentally’ hire quite a few criminals, wanted in their home countries. Men who weren’t attached, were on the run, and willing to do what they were told without a second though. And Liam Wells was orchestrated perfectly for these terms. Twenty years old, British, looking for a job away from the British Isles. He’d had a family a year ago. Or at least, he’d had a mum and a brother, Charlie. And then there was a birthday celebration for Charlie at a local bar. Both brothers drank copiously. A bar fight ensued. And Liam had a dead brother, and a mother who couldn’t look at him. Not that he could see her anyway, living under a fake name in Ireland, looking for a quick escape before the cops caught up.

It demonstrated remarkably poor planning, Alex thought, that spy agencies kept reusing the same backstories for their undercover agents. Seventeen years ago John Rider ha joined SCORPIA while feigning a military hero disgraced after killing a man in a drunken bar fight. The difference was that Alex wasn’t going to go to prison for his backstory. Liam, unlike John Rider, had fled his country rather than face the charge of manslaughter.

Despite living in Ireland under a counterfeit name, Liam applied for the job under his own name. Liam's cover letter said he could find his own way to Argentina. He submitted the application online on Tuesday. Wednesday night he picked up a call inviting him to Buenos Ares for a personal interview. Friday, Liam left Ireland with a fake passport in hand. Monday, Liam had a job, and a flight from Buenos Ares to the island.

\--AR—

From the moment the small plane left mainland Argentina, Alex regretted his decision to take the mission. A feeling of dread entered his body, heavy and foreboding. The plane rose through the air with a dreadful noise. Barking seagulls flew nearby in the opaque grey sky. 

“Is this your first time flying? You look a bit pale, hmmm?” Alex looked up to the smiling Nigerian man that had boarded the same private flight in Buenos Ares. He was in his mid-thirties, broad, and with smile lines stretched across his face. His name was Enobahkare, and despite his smile Alex knew he would be deadly if pressed. Enobakhare’s figure reminded Alex of Nile, and his cheerful manner as well. The sort of man who was friendly until he wasn’t.

“I’m alright,” Alex replied. “Just…thinking my brother would have liked the view.”

Enobahkare’s eyes raised at ‘would have’, and he switched the subject.

“Connor, David, ever been to Argentina before?” The Nigerian addressed the two other men in the small plane.

Connor had brown hair, freckles, and a large brown birthmark on his neck. “No.” He said shortly, accent recognizably Irish. 

“It’s my first time,” David said. The Israeli was a few inches shorter than Alex, perhaps 5’8’’, and had a dark beard. Alex had memorized the face before the two had met at the airport half an hour ago. The Israeli had worked in nuclear technology for the Israeli military for years, and his defection from their armed forces had been a primary reason for the CIA to place Alex undercover on the island.

“It’s too personal to ask why everyone is here?” Enobahkare smiled.

“Needed a job, and I was recommended here from an old engineering friend.” Connor nodded at everyone briefly. 

“Same,” Alex said. “Well, not the recommended by an engineering friend bit. Just needed a job. This paid well. And it let me travel. I never got to as a child.”

“You’re not much older than one now,” David said, in a noticeable Israeli accent. “You’re what, nineteen? My oldest’s 17. Almost your age. A world of possibilities ahead.”

“Twenty,” Alex defended.

“You’re right about the money,” David agreed. “I used to be in the Israeli Defense Force, for several years. Everyone in Israel has to join, with a few exceptions. Defend the homeland. I became an expert in weapons and munitions. But my daughter, she has a rare disorder. A genetic mutation. I want the best life for her.”

“Must have been a great offer, to take you all the way from Israel,” Connor said.

“It was a very specific technical post. I was one of a few men qualified. Might have been a pay raise." 

The chatter quickly turned less personal, and shortly the four of them discovered a mutual admiration for football. With four nationalities battling over who had the best football team (Alex was quick to admit it wasn’t Britain), the rest of the flight passed quickly. Alex’s feeling of unease faded into a niggling sense of caution..

They disembarked the plane at a small landing strip next to a building barely large enough to qualify as an airport. The minibus picked them up from the hangar to drive them the short distance to the facility.

As the minibus hurtled over the uneven dirt road close to their destination, Alex could see five looming buildings take over the grim skyline. “I thought this wasn’t a large facility?”

“It’s not a huge one, but some of our projects need space.” The bus driver spoke in American English. “Two of those buildings are just for manufacturing and weapons testing. One is offices, the shorter one there, and then the tall buildings are both mostly dorms, food, and a couple recreation rooms.”

“Do we get a gym?” David asked.

“A fairly decent one.  A bunch of the guys play football outside on Sunday too.”

"I'll join those," Connor said.

Smiling a bit in anticipation of the exercise, Alex unloaded his bags off the bus. Perhaps his momentary anxiety was groundless. Moments later he was being greeted by a Spanish speaking guard and led into the main building.

The men were guided to leave their luggage in a stack to be searched, “for protocol”. Alex gathered with the other men in the middle of the room. A man lined them up one by one against a white backdrop poster to take photos for security identification cards.

“Even more handsome than in my passport photo!” Enobahkare exclaimed, reviewing his headshot in the photographer’s camera. “The rest of your photos?  Much uglier than mine. And now we know who all of the women will come to for good times.” 

Chuckling, the photographer left to print the photos.

“Alright, new hires, line up. It’s time to meet your head of security.” Joel Davis, who had introduced himself as the “chief of staff” for the island once Alex and the others had arrived, gestured them over.

“Chief of security?” Connor asked. “Are we a security risk?”

“Not at all. Well, yes, but also you’re in a secure place. We want to keep everyone safe. So the head of security, really, he’s your boss. He’s almost everyone’s boss here, standing in for the head of our firm.”

“Delightful.” Enobakhare smiled. “Hope he’s friendly.”

Joel shrugged. “You’ll see. Gregorovich is on his way over, he’ll be here soon.”

Panic hit him before the word truly registered.

Gregorovich.

 _Alex, Yassen Gregorovich is alive. He escaped last night. He knows the truth about your father. We don_ _’_ _t think he_ _’_ _ll go after you, but we can assign extra guards, to watch you and the Pleasures._

All of the worry from the plane flooded back.

“Where’s the restroom?” Alex asked, considering his options.

“It’s right around the corner, let me show you—” Joel started, but a familiar voice at the doorway cut him short.

“Good afternoon.”

“Ah, wait a second Liam. Let me introduce you all first.”

Reluctantly, Alex turned to face the dead man. 

 “Our new hires, sir, from left to right, David from Israel, Connor from Ireland, Enobakhare from Nigeria, and Liam from England. Last one looks a bit young for twenty, but there you are.” Joel smirked.

Yassen considered Alex for a long moment. Alex, frozen, searched for signs of emotion in the familiar face. Yassen had  _died_ _._ Now impassive eyes gave no signs of recognition aside from his lingering gaze. Churning nerves pinched the inside of Alex's stomach.  _Being here was a mistake._  “Perhaps you’ll hit a growth spurt soon. One that makes you look older than 16.”

Seconds passed while Alex searched for the appropriate response. What did one say to a dead man with a gun?. “Maybe.” Alex murmured.

“Lads, this is our head of security, and your boss. Mr. Gregorovitch. Do everything he says the first time he tells you and you’ll be fine.”

“Probably,” Yassen agreed. His eyes left Alex and roamed the rest of the assembled faces.

“Joel will meet you to deliver your schedules for the first day at dinner. You’ll have a tour after breakfast tomorrow. I’ll check in with all of you soon about security clearances. In the meantime, stay out of any restricted areas.” Yassen looked straight at Alex. “Until then, stay in the dormitories unless accompanied by someone else. It will prevent run ins with security. At a facility as strictly monitored as this one, guards will sometimes shoot before asking questions.”

Alex swallowed. There was no mistaking the implied threat.

“Clear, sir,” David said.

Connor and Enobakhare agreed.

“And is it clear for you?” Yassen directed the question at Alex, tone unconcerned.

“Yes, sir,” Alex agreed..

\--AR--

“Don't leave the new hires alone for a second.”

“Really? Not a single second? Not a chance to shake one out? Poor lads.” Joel said conversationally. “Bit suspicious of them, are we?”

“It's my job to be suspicious of everyone.”

“Alright then. New hires will work in pairs with the older hires. Other recommendations?”

Yassen hesitated. Cameras would a worthy investment. But if the cameras caught Alex acting suspiciously on tape, there would need to be repercussions. Ones that Yassen would be unable to fake. 

“The new hires came with clothes and luggage. Take it all. Check they’re not holding anything besides the clothes on their back and add it all to the pile over there. Hold it for me to search again. Give them uniforms and anything else they need but I will keep their stuff until I have double checked for wires.”

“I can do that.” Joel pulled out a pack of cigarettes, glanced around the room to check it was clear, and walked to the door. “Smoke?”

Taking the cigarette and lighter, Yassen followed Joel outside. “Do you have specific posts for all of them in mind?”

“The Israeli, he’s assigned already. He’s the one we hired to work on the nuclear project. The Nigerian chap, with the difficult name, him I want working security. He comes highly recommended from a military organization in Lagos.”

“The youngest, Liam?”

“I don’t know, I’ll have to see what he’s good at. He’s too young to be an expert at anything already. He might go on the assembly line, or in the warehouse on the dock, doing our shipments to the Argentinian government.”

Yassen nodded thoughtfully. The docks could be a harmless place to keep Alex. But the dock personnel moved around the compound regularly, finding and delivering shipments. Alex would slip away easily in a moment and end up where he shouldn’t be. That wouldn't do. Yassen could protect Alex's live-possibly, with luck-but only if Alex was kept out of trouble. There would need to be a supervisor, a trusted employee who could keep Alex away from the illicit aspects of the business. 

“Put him in training for manufacturing temporarily. I may relocate him in a day.”

\--AR—

It was on his way to lunch the next day that Alex saw Yassen again. So far Alex’s first day had been uneventful: paperwork, intake processing he wasn’t sure if jobs usually involved, passport information, criminal background check (which seemed more of a joke than anything else, considering the real nature of this place), and tax forms. Alex had never done this when working with MI6, and it had been simple with the CIA. They had done most of the work for him. Spies don’t come to work for the CIA without intensive vetting procedures, most of which Alex had gotten around because of his history, and the sad fact that there just that weren’t many people who knew Alex left alive for the CIA to ask.

It was the lunch break, and Enobakhare had clapped Alex-slash-Liam round the back and invited him to go grab some grub with “the adults”. All morning Enobakhare had been entertaining the group of new hires with tales of Anansi, the spider god of West Africa. One story, of Anansi stealing a tiger’s balls, had been told so outrageously that even the man processing their paperwork, Jerome, had needed a moment to breath and drink some water.

“And then we took their clothes and dipped it in the tar – oh, look, it’s the head of security.” Enobakhare paused in his high school recollections to nod respectfully to Gregorovich, and two dark men he was talking to.

Yassen saw the four new hires sitting at in a booth in the mess hall. He walked over.

“Sir,” Connor greeted. 

Yassen nodded in response. “How was your first day?”

Easily Enobakhare responded with a Nigerian proverb about uninteresting parts of life. Alex stared at his half-eaten sandwich, thinking of ways to escape. 

“I’m still waiting to see,” Connor responded. “I’ve not worked in weaponry before.”

“How did you find this job?”

“I was recommended to apply here, by another engineer.”

“Someone here?”

“No. He worked at the Denmark office for a bit, but it was a temporary post.”

Yassen nodded. He looked at David. “Someone recommended you to us.”

“And I heard the calling on the wind,” Enobakhare added to the conversation. “It called, riches, riches, riches to pay for a new house, get three new wives, and feed five fat babies.”

David turned to him. “How about you, Liam?”

“I was looking for a job in security." Alex gazed at the wall behind Yassen. “Wanted to see the world, I guess.”

Yassen’s lip twitched in condescension. “Yes, the sixteen going on twenty-year-old. Why were you here again?”

“It was all online, not exactly inconspicuous,” Alex glanced at Yassen. “I just looked up jobs online and applied for this.”

“Your criminal background did not pass check, and now we must consider whether it is worth keeping you, although Argentina laws protect extradition.”

“That’s all in the past,” Alex said. If Yassen was going to speak to Liam, Alex could play that game. “I was drunk.”

“Strange how that story happens to so many British men.”

“It’s close to something that happened to my dad, getting drunk and ruining his life.” Alex shifted. How far should he push this? “Like father, like son, I guess.”

“And where is your father now?” Yassen's tone was unconcerned. 

“Dead."

Yassen's eyebrows raised in polite interest. Alex scowled. "He was killed by someone he thought was his friend.”

“If you are so similar to your father, I would be careful working around so many dangerous men with guns.”

“Don't worry about me. I've survived worse.”

"There's a first time for every failure. Keep that in mind, Liam. This company is not a friendly place." Yassen nodded at the group, and left without further words to rejoin the men he’d been talking with.

“Jesus,” Alex muttered. Connor was looking between Yassen’s departing figure and Alex, a slight furrow in his brow.

“You are scared of the Russian man, Liam?” Enobakhare asked, accent thick in his concern.

Alex didn’t respond, unsure how to answer. Scared? No, that wasn’t the right word. Angry that he had to deal with Yassen being here, yes; confused at what Yassen would do, yes. Terrified, even, that Yassen was toying with him. Hopeful, maybe, for an opportunity to talk.

 “Don’t worry, it’s not unusual. I think he is a wise man to keep your distance from.”

“Yeah,” Alex agreed. “I’ll try to give him some space.”

\--AR--

Two days later, they met again. This time it was not an accident. Alex had gone back to his chamber, after a day of grudging rifle assembly, and had barely pulled out a pile of things together to go take a shower and change before the interruption came. Yassen Gregorovich came silently into the room and met his eyes. Alex swallowed, and put down his towel and pajamas. So it was time to end the charade of ignorance towards each other's purpose on the isle.

Silently,Yassen closed the door. “Liam.”

“You.”

Raising an eyebrow, Yassen crossed to stand next to the bed. Unconsciously, Alex moved into a defensive stance he’d learned with the SAS two years ago. Without hesitation Yassen shoved Alex into the wall. Alex struck out to meet Yassen’s arms, only to have his legs swept under him.

Alex tried to roll away and was kicked, hard, in the shin.

Yassen stood back for a moment, while Alex ducked out of range and stood up against the wall. Seconds later he moved in, pushing Alex against the wall and pinning him there by his shoulders. Alex tried to grab Yassen’s wrists and pull the man off of him, and Yassen shoved him against the wall, banging his head.

Stunned into inaction, Alex froze. His hands loosely clung to Yassen’s wrists, but there was no force there. Yassen fingers dug into his shoulders.  

Yassen met Alex’s eyes.

“Why are you here, Liam Wells?” Yassen moved his hands to Alex’s throat, and increased the pressure. His hands weren't eliminating the flow of air into his body, but they came close.

“I killed my brother. It wasn’t an accident, and I need a job,” Alex whispered, using as little air as he could. Cold blue eyes examined him, and Alex knew the killer could feel his elevated heart rate. Was this revenge for getting shot by a madman? He was going to be strangled in a tiny bedroom at the bottom of the world. Almost in answer, Yassen held up a short brown hair. A hair that was the same brown as his dye.

“And if Liam Wells wanted to keep that job, he would want to stay where he is supposed to be.” Yassen examined him. “Instead of, for example, leaving DNA evidence in highly secured offices.”

“For example,” Alex repeated softly. _Idiot._ He had thought he was being careful. He had even used his only remaining gadget to disable the security cameras around the office momentarily. All that for his hair to be the giveaway. 

 Yassen’s hand left Alex’s throat, and he swallowed nervously. “It could be a coincidence.”

“No,” Yassen replied. “Did you find anything?”

Alex shook his head. Yassen had to have already known that – Alex had figured out that every cabinet and the computer had a separate key or password almost immediately, and he had only risked being in the office for fifteen minutes. It hadn’t been long enough to break into cabinet.

Yassen nodded. “The break-in was not a serious concern thankfully, because I know why Liam Wells was in my office. Today he was interviewing for a new position in that same office someone is so eager to break into. Another pair of watchful eyes to ensure the security of personal computers.”

Warily, Alex asked, “What new job is that?”

A ghost of amusement flickered across the Russian’s face. “Some would call the position one of an executive assistant.”

Alex focused on the scar on Yassen’s throat. He considered, and dismissed, saying that he wasn’t a coffee boy. Considered, and maybe didn’t dismiss, that this was the man’s way of keeping him safe. If Yassen wanted him dead or tortured, he could have done it already. There was no point waiting. And if he wanted to keep an eye on Alex, it meant Alex would be spending a lot of time in the office. At some point he could be left alone. There could be an accident, or sabotage.

“What time do I start?”

\--AR—

It was a beautiful day, Alex thought, if only he had a chance for a swim and a nap in the sun. Today was the day off, for most the people on the island, except for the few that worked Sundays in order to take Mondays off.

Apparently neither situation applied to Liam/Alex. In the total of 15 words that Yassen had spoken to him yesterday – _type up those reports_ being the first four – Yassen had told Alex that when hiring for his position, the Russian had forewarned applicants that the position ran seven days a week.

Alex paused before the door to the main building. Apparently starting at 7 was enough of a break to be considered a day off, and Alex was starting to hate his life enough to admit that the extra two hours of sleep was a luxury. Five days of waking up at 4:30 to be ready at 5, and dismissed at 21 hours if he was lucky, and just enough time to get dinner, before bed, and a shower and food before starting all over in the morning.

Was it too much to ask for a month-long assignment where no one knew him? Without Yassen here, there was a distinct possibility Alex would have found evidence of illegal activity and sent it back to D.C. by now. As it was, he barely had enough energy to drag himself to work on time. Which, he was sure, was the goal.

The keypad to the door glistened in the sunlight. Keeping an eye on his watch, Alex stood in the rising sun another minute. When the time struck 6:59, he made a face and punched in, going straight to the dim office newly christened ‘the bane of his existence’.

“Jerome?”

“How’s it going kid?” Jerome looked up from the desk, where he was reading some spy novel by Le Carre. Alex had met him a few days previously, when filling out paperwork on his first full day on the island.

“I’m alright. Where’s Gregorovich?”

“Not here.” Jerome kicked his feet onto the desk, folding them lazily. “I’m supposed to keep an eye on the building, since this room has access to the security monitors. But between us, there’s not much to it, so I’m going to keep this,” he waved the book lightly, “with me. Love his spy thrillers.”

“How is it?” Alex asked.  

“It’s good. Cuts a little bit close to home, of course,” Jerome chuckled. “With the illegal activities and arms selling and all. But I’ll shut up now. I have strict instructions from Gregorovich to keep quiet and let you work.”

“It’s fine, I won’t get distracted. Really, I’m in here all day. Tell me what’s going on.”

Jerome paused. “No offense, kid, but you’re not interesting enough to risk anything on. Your boss isn’t someone to be messed with. He tells me to keep quiet, I keep quiet.”

“Just tell me what’s happening the book,” Alex rolled his eyes. “C’mon. I’m dying of boredom here.”

“Your problem, sir.” The man smirked, and looked at his book again.

Alex stared at Jerome in frustration for perhaps a second too long for someone who was voluntarily doing this work. Screw assassins. Maybe he wasn’t being tortured, technically, but if Yassen wanted him to suffer it was bloody working.

“Can you get me coffee at least?”

“Not allowed to leave the room,” Jerome said cheerily. “Same instructions you’re under, I gather.”

 _Yes._ Alex sighed. He wished he had lingered longer outside. Jerome was probably recording the time he came in and the time he left, though, and with the papers left from yesterday, he had a lot of typing to do. A lot of possible headaches oncoming from the strain of staring at the screen for fourteen-hour days. Maybe Jerome would let him put his head down and rest for a minute if he claimed a headache, and then tonight Alex could have the energy to do the reconnaissance he was here for. Alex had tried claiming a headache once, two days ago, to let his eyes rest for a second. Yassen had looked at him, told him to get water, and said that if he put his head down again he would be staying up until 2 to clean the kitchen.

Turning to the mounds of papers on his desk, Alex picked up the top stapled file. It was a purchase receipt for groceries from the one market down in the village. Food on here to feed fifty people for a week, or one hundred people for half of that. Milk, eggs, some Argentinian foods Alex was beginning to recognize. Nothing that needed to be typed up, if his suspicions were correct.

“We still have time for some scintillating conversations,” Alex offered, pushing his work across his desk. 

Loudly, Jerome whistled off key.

\--AR—

“Did you know there’s a gym in the main building, on the first floor? My I.D. gives me clearance, it’s supposed to be for the employees here.”

Yassen looked up with a familiar look of focused disinterest. From the previous times Alex had tried to engage him in conversation, there was probably a minute left before Yassen lost patience with the distraction of talking.

“I was thinking of going to the gym,” Alex continued, “but then I realized I didn’t know when the time would happen. I don’t have many hours off,

“Prioritize.”

“You literally had me staple a bunch of blank papers, and then de-staple them today. Is that a priority?”

Yassen’s neutral expression didn’t flicker. “Consider it discipline. If you joined the American army, you would end up doing similar work. More, perhaps, because of your proclivity to backtalk.”

“And what would happen, say, if I _didn_ _’_ _t_ follow the instructions for once? Went to the gym at 5 instead of here?”

“I imagine you would be fired, for not completing your job.”

“With a bullet to the brain, and a body buried behind the local church?”

“You would collet your pay and wait for a plane to the mainland. Your wages would be docked to reflect the cost to charter a private plane after your dereliction of duty.”

Alex snorted. Of bloody course they would.

 “Back to work, Liam.” Yassen turned away and Alex weighed the costs of pantomiming a gunshot at his own temple. Knowing the corporate hell he was locked in now, there was probably some H.R. training on depressive thoughts in the workplace (particularly one surrounded by guns).  Shaking his head wryly, Alex returned to his own charade of a day job.

\--AR—

It was 9 pm when Yassen told Alex he was done for the night, and to return the next morning at 4. Head spinning with lines of numbers, Alex dragged himself to the dining hall for dinner. He was too exhausted to be hungry, but he needed food. The man who delivered sandwiches and other hot foods to the various executive positions and their ~~slaves~~ staff came around noon, and since then Alex had been given a series of mundane tasks including stapling receipts (nothing incriminating), copying reports on the calibration of a rifle by hand, and typing up a dizzying array of handwritten notes documenting travel plans for one of the other executives. Part of Alex was curious if anything he dealt with could actually be used to make a case against Frobisher and his company if only he could smuggle it out, and another part wondered if Yassen was making busy work in a sadistic attempt to cause early blindness.

Taking a premade tray of food, Alex surveyed the dining room for a familiar face. Three faces popped out at him – the other new hires, sitting near the center of the room.

“Liam,” Enobakhare greeted in a strong Nigerian accent, waving him over. “We hardly see you. How are things?”

“Bloody exhausting.” Alex took a seat, and dug a fork into the tasteless red meatloaf. “Is it normal to see blue Windows screensavers dance behind your eyes when you close them?”

David leaned his head back and laughed. “Oh, you are pushed. Do you have a day off soon? Or just slaving away for the man?”

“No days off,” Alex admitted. “There’s a pay bump though.”

“That make up for sitting in that damn dark office twenty hours a day?”

“No.”

“But you took the job and now you have to stick it out?”

 Alex made a face, confirming David’s suspicion.

“Ah,” Enobakhare laughed sympathetically. “Punishment for your new life of crime, yes? You have found a new job that pays for a new life of crime, and in return you’re with a dangerous man who can show you what that is like.”

A frown tugged across Alex’s face. He strongly doubted any of these men knew just how dangerous the man was. What would they even say if he asked? “Dangerous?”

“Oh, listen to the kid, dangerous?” The Nigerian mocked kindly, adopting a higher tone for the last word. “Just do what your boss says, you’ll be fine.”

“How did you get that job anyway?”

“It was a,” he hesitated, “private interview. Apparently, I looked young enough to deal with long hours.”

“Young enough to need more sleep, poor man.” Connor shook his head in mock desolation. “Did you want the job, or was it offered as a done deal?”

Alex gave a tired smile. Enough of an answer to keep them off his back. “Tell me about your days. They have to be more exciting than mine. All I do is die a little each day.”

“Oh, a little arms production, a little security,” David dismissed. “What do you do, really?”

“Amuse a sadist with my suffering,” Alex said, smiling just enough to dismiss his words as a joke. “A lot of typing, a bit of stapling. It’s just dull enough to stop me from finding a gun and blowing my brains out.”

“Gregorovich really likes your company, to keep you up for those hours doing drudge work.” The Nigerian shook his head as he said it, his amusement clearly not fading at the whole situation.

“I guess he thought I’d be in less trouble.” Alex pushed stringy green beans around on his plate, before pushing some onto his fork. “He’s only there half the time. But others come in and watch the computer, so I’m not alone. He doesn’t trust me with the keys to the castle.”

“Do you tell good jokes in the meantime? No, wait, don’t do that. Probably best you just stick to ‘no, sir’ and ‘yes, sir’ with that one.”

“Probably,” Alex agreed. “It’s a pretty quiet office. Sometimes he listens to things, on his phone.  Music, probably.” For a few days Yassen hadn’t seemed to have much work at all, and he’d turned his laptop the news to watch hour long segments in different languages. Alex had actually been able to follow the news in German about a series of car robberies near Berlin, and Yassen, sensing his interest, had let Alex get away with not working during that period. It was during a period of days where Alex had been giving the Yassen the silent treatment, but Alex had almost broken his muteness to ask how much the assassin understood. Probably all of it. The next news hour block had seemed like Russian, although maybe it was Ukranian or a similar East European language, and Alex had gone back to itemizing orders for the construction of a new bunkhouse near the main facility.

“Think of the upside though – anyone tries to invade this place, most secure room in the building is probably Gregorovich’s office.”

“Or it would be the office someone most wanted to break into?” Alex suggested.

David smiled. “Bad luck to anyone who tried that.”

“Yeah,” Alex sighed, thinking of his own fate. “Probably anyone who did would end up happy with a slow death.”

\--AR—

Two days later, Alex had just glanced at his watch for the tenth time in ten minute. Good, the safety drill was minutes away. There should be an announcement any moment now. It was scheduled for an hour and a half, and there was a scheduled break for biscuits (or “cookies”, Joel insisted) and tea afterwards. Even arms dealers weren’t immune to showing off a bit of company morale. If David was to be believed at dinner last night, there’d be more than a few strong liquors out too.

Yassen cast an inquisitive eye his way, but said nothing.

Finally, an announcement crackled over the intercom. “Attention. Attention. All personnel report to the main lawn. All personnel report to the main lawn.”

Triumphantly, Alex smiled. Freedom. He reached for the jacket he left lying across his desk, sprawled over piles of food receipts for the cafeteria that he was supposed to type up.

 “You can stay.” Yassen looked up from his laptop. “I’ve gotten you excused.”

Anger rose in his throat. He wasn’t even planning on sneaking away during the exercise, probably. He just wanted a chance to clear his head and walk in sunlight for a minute.  Get reconnaissance on who was on the island. The afternoon would be innocent enough.

 “That’s great. Because, you know, I wouldn’t want to leave your presence for literally a second longer than I need to.” Alex clenched a fist against his leg.

Yassen examined him calmly. Alex glared. Visualizing the workout he wished he was doing instead of being here, he tried to calm himself. Fury was not a successful tact.

 “It’s just one afternoon. I won’t get into trouble, there will be eyes everywhere.” The word ‘please’ almost slipped out as well, but he was still above begging. 

 “At the moment, this needs to be done.” Yassen wasn’t looking at him, his head newly bent over his own laptop. “Go back to work, Liam.”

\--AR—

 _Watch the door._ The fuck kind of assignment was that. Alex scowled at the door, crossed his legs, tapped his fingers against his arms. Supposedly, he was going to watch the door until a man came in and dropped off a bundle of papers. After that, who knows. Watch a cup of coffee. Drag a knife down his arm. Bash his head into a wall repeatedly until his brains bled down the side of his head.

“Stop.” Yassen looked over from where he was writing a series of checks. Alex felt the frustration rising. He wanted to tamp it, he knew that bursting out at the man wouldn’t solve anything. He wasn’t fool enough to believe that Yassen cared much beyond the general idea that Alex was alive, and not immediately in danger. He didn’t know how long Yassen’s patience would last for the son of a man who had betrayed him. It hadn’t been enough to stop him from putting a bullet in Ian Rider’s head.

And that was kind of the problem.

“Stop _what_ ,” Alex hissed venomously. “I’m fucking watching the door.”

“Sulking.”

“What could I possibly have to sulk about? I’ve got a job with the head of security but I’m never left alone with the files, I’m being tormented daily by a man I want dead, forced to do whatever twisted joke appears in his head, and if I leave I’m a failure.”

“No one would call you a failure.”

Alex rolled his eyes. Because what he really needed was a pep talk from a murderer.

The room quieted to clicking keys on the keyboard and frustrated fidgeting.

“Sabina still has nightmares, by the way.” Alex fixed his eyes on the door, not needing to see the killer another second than he was forced to by his mission.

“Do you have nightmares? You don’t look as if you’ve slept.” The bloody assassin asked without concern.

Alex grimaced. He wanted to say it was because of the work schedule, but it wasn’t true. Yes, he had fucking nightmares. Sarov blowing his head open, Ash lying in a pool of his own blood, Julius laughing in his face before killing Jack, Jack…He shivered, and wrapped his arms around himself. “That’s personal.”

“There are people you could talk to, if that’s the case.”

“Sure.”

“There is a psychologist here that would talk to you.”

Alex rolled his eyes. “No.”

“You could go home and choose someone.”

Grinding his teeth, Alex stopped himself from swearing. “I’m not going home, I have a job.”

“Which you are neglecting.” The pointed remark was accompanied by a nod in the direction of Alex’s desk, but Alex knew the remark was intended to be a jab at his true purpose on the island. He had found almost nothing for the CIA so far. Nothing except for the information he hadn't yet sent: Yassen Gregorovich is alive, and here.

“Are you torturing me for betraying your past employers? Keep me around to watch me squirm?”

“This isn’t a punishment, A-.” Yassen stopped, a strange look on his face. Alex paused, for a second. The Russian hadn’t once called him Alex, since seeing him here. Even when the conversation, like now, revealed that Alex was more of a pissed off teenager than the criminal secretary, Yassen spoke only to Liam, the young man Alex pretended to be.

“Liam.” Alex helped. “Maybe you’re thinking of somebody else.”

The Russian examined him another minute, saying nothing. He nodded, and turned back to his computer.

Alex watched him another minute, angrier than before. If Yassen wasn’t going to have a conversation with him, not that he expected one, at least Alex could have the last word.

"Can you cut the audio for a minute?"

Yassen glanced up, not yet curious.

"I know you have this place bugged. Cut the feed for a minute or I'll do something we both regret."

Eyes narrowed, Yassen nonetheless typed a series of numbers into his laptop. 

Alex waited a second, barely containing his anger. Yassen nodded at him to continue.

“The older I get, the less I care about people I never knew. And I’m sorry, but I didn’t know my dad. Maybe you did. Maybe you liked him, even though he betrayed you. I knew the man who raised me, and I cared about him, and now he’s gone, because of you.”

Alex paused, making sure he had the man’s full attention. It wasn’t smart to continue along this path, probably, but he was tired of the games, of sitting in a dark office being ignored for hours on end just to keep him out of the way. Yassen was keeping him alive because of John, but Alex wasn’t John. “You can play your games of just needing a secretary while you find inane tasks to keep me out of your way, but I’m going to find the time to get what I’m here for. And maybe I’ll get killed along the way, but what’s it to you?”

“My dad wasn’t your friend. He betrayed you. You didn’t care enough to not kill his brother. And I’m not a child, I can make my own decisions. I _chose_ to be here.”

A nerve shifted in the assassin's face. Alex sat back. Already he regretted his words, regretted asking for a moment without the audio. His feelings, while true, could only lead to further alienation at the best. At the worst, he would be dead in a day.

Yassen rose, suddenly, with the same deadly grace Alex knew to expect. Alex tensed, ready for a fight. He would lose, but he would get in a couple punches. Assuming he wasn’t shot. The Russian appraised him, cool blue eyes examining his posture. Suddenly, the intensity seemed to abandon the killer. Yasen shook his ruefully and reached for his jacket.

"Perhaps we take a walk.”

\--AR--

“You think I’m keeping you close because I want you to suffer?”

The two were standing alone, at the edge of the fence at the ground’s perimeter. Looking down a gravel footpath in the opposite direction of their path, Alex faintly saw the pointed steeple of the town’s church. 

 “I think _you think_ that you’re keeping me safe.”

“Then I would think I’m succeeding.” Yassen rubbed a hand against his forehead and sighed.  “I’m sorry, for sending you there.”

The apology sounded sincere. Alex stared down at the church.

 “I was dying. I thought you would find people who would protect you, and you would follow John’s path. It was the wrong decision.”

 “I did follow his path. I took down SCORPIA.”

The two were silent in each other’s company for another minute, Yassen looking at Alex and Alex steadfastly avoiding eye contact. The  trudge up the hill or the fresh air had stolen his anger. Now he felt confused. Alone. Wishing very much that Ian was here to help remind him that he hated Yassen for good reason, or that Ash was here so there was someone he hated more. And more and more hate seemed the wrong word to describe his feelings toward both men. There was no point hating a dead man, and Yassen had saved him, repeatedly, almost at the cost of his own life.

Yassen was clearly still thinking about SCORPIA. “Did you meet anyone you liked at Malagosta?”

“Sort of.” It was true, despite the reason everyone attended the school. Some of the adults, like Amanda, had been practically friendly to Alex.

“No one that you because friends with though?”

“No.”

“Good.” Yassen nodded. “For many reasons. It would not be safe, and they would not be trustworthy. Soon after your time there you were back to MI6. If SCORPIA thought that anyone else had become close with you, that person’s graduation assignment would have been to kill you, after you made their operation fail.”

Alex almost flinched. He couldn’t tell from Yassen’s tone of voice what he thought of Alex’s intervention against Invisible Sword. “They were going to kill children.”

“I heard.”

“Thousands of them. And me.” There was no need to be defensive. Alex had been right to put a stop to the operation. But Yassen had sent him there. If anyone deserved a justification for Alex ending his brief time as a terrorist – no. No one deserved a justification for why thousands of children did not deserve to die.

“Alex.” Yassen waited for their eyes to meet. “John worked for MI6, and I was working for SCORPIA by the end of our partnership. Nonetheless, we were friends. A poor friend I, if I killed his only child.”

Unable to stop himself, Alex gave his rebuttal. “You killed his only brother.”

Yassen nodded, measured. “Ian Rider was an adult who made his own choices. I’m sorry that his death led to your time with MI6.”

“And you still think I’m not an adult.”

“I’m not doubting your competency.”

Alex laughed, short and sharp. Of course not.

“You’re free to leave. You’ll have no proof, and your employers will possibly send a replacement, but you would be safe.” Yassen smiled, wryly. “And not stuck with someone you hate all day.”

“I would tell my bosses that you’re here.”

“That would only be useful if they were after me. My presence here is not proof of any misconduct on my employer’s behalf.”

Yassen Gregorovich was a wanted man, but, “You would say you lied about who you were.”

“I wouldn’t be caught, but yes.”

“Still. They might make an example of the former SCORPIA hit man.”

Yassen shrugged. “I was a tool of their organization then, and now I’m a tool of a different organization. You will not like to hear it, but I have worked contracts for the CIA before. The last was more recent than you would care to hear.”

“When?” Alex thought back to the mission logs he'd been reading pre-mission. What had the CIA been involved with in the past two years?

“I was hired for discretion.”

“I could ask them.” 

Again, Yassen shrugged, and Alex realized the truth. “They would say you lied. And then they’d spend a long time questioning me about when we’d been talking, and why I hadn’t let them you know were here right away.”

“Why haven’t you?”

“I haven’t had the chance. You took my stuff. Everyone else got their stuff back, but I just got replacements.”

Even still, it wasn’t the whole reason. Similar to the first time Alex had seen Yassen, when the man had killed someone for dropping a box of chemicals, there were more reasons for hiding Yassen than just having the opportunity. The CIA would ask Alex to leave, or they would send in others, and someone would die. They would send in someone Yassen would spot. Yassen had no reason to keep anyone besides Alex alive. He would shoot them because ‘it wasn’t personal,’ and he would keep Alex alive because it was.

Alex folded his arms together and shivered slightly in a spot of wind. Defiantly, “What if I do finish my mission? People always tell me they’re going to kill me and I can’t stop their plans. I’ve always stopped them. You’re telling me you won’t kill me but I still can’t stop you. What if I do?”

“Are you asking because you want me to treat you as a competent and dangerous risk, or because you want to know if I’ll shoot you if you succeed?”

He had asked wondering about the latter, but now he considered the former. If Yassen was treating him like an adult, instead of a child spy and the child of John Rider…it would amount to being shot, most likely. If not immediately, then after rounds of interrogation to find out what he knew. Yassen hadn’t bothered to do any of that. What he had done was remove Alex’s luggage and replace it with clothes from the village, and forced Alex into close quarters with him. Had kept Alex too busy to cause problems.

“It’s usually better for me if adults think I’m incompetent.”

Yassen smiled wryly, perhaps thinking of Sayle and Cray. “I agree.”

“So the other question then.” Alex tried to look calm. He doubted he succeeded, but Yassen didn’t look affronted at being asked.

“You’re in no danger from me, Alex. Not at sixteen.”

“I’ll be seventeen soon.”

“February 16th?”

Uneasy at how quickly Yassen had known, Alex conceded. “Yeah.”

“I joined SCORPIA at nineteen. Try to leave this before then.”

Alex looked down at the village again. Would this become his life? Eventually he would be tired, and want retirement, surely. For John Rider it had come at, when had Ash said, 34? Ian had still been working as a spy in his 40s. “I don’t know if that will happen.”

“No one knows their destiny before it happens.” Yassen said.

“You told me my destiny was to find SCORPIA.”

“And I was wrong. Clearly I don’t know your destiny either.”

“Maybe my destiny will keep me in this line of work.”

He wasn’t sure he believed in destiny. Ian had never brought him to church, and Jack was a Christmas time believer. The two services Alex had briefly attended at a Baptist church never mentioned destiny, only God's plan. His plan had not, in Alex's experience, been particularly kind towards Alex. But if Yassen believed in destiny Alex might as well mirror the few words that would affect the assassin. 

“I have a hard time imagining hurting you,” Yassen admitted. “If I needed to, I would. But you would leave alive.”

"What if someone else tried to kill me?"

"We've seen that happen before, I think." Shaking his head regretfully, the Russian looked back towards the cluster of buildings. "Time to return to work. This time perhaps I can keep you out of trouble long enough to avoid being shot ."by my employers

\--AR--

 “You may still quit," Yassen suggested.

“That’s you want, isn’t it?  No problems, no clean up, no proof of wrongdoing.” Alex replied, half mocking. Talking with Yassen yesterday had left him feeling lighter. The office, still a prison of misery and unnecessary tasks, at least felt safe. He could be wrong, of course. But he didn’t think Yassen was a liar. Which meant Alex would, most likely, leave the island alive. And, perhaps, he could push Yassen a little harder without pain of death.

“Yes,” Yassen agreed. “I would prefer that you weren’t here.”

 Alex hesitated. “In fairness to you, I’d be leaving alive, which is obviously one of your goals.”

“In fairness to me?” Yassen put down the pen he was holding. 

“In fairness to the fact that you’re not one of the worst of the worst people I’ve met. I mean, you are. But compared to some of the others, you’re maybe at the bottom of top 20.” Alex paused, and reassessed exactly how many villains he had gone against in his career, and how many of them had more than one henchman. “You might be closer to the bottom of the top 30, actually.”

With the flicker of a smile, Yassen responded. “You’ll have to tell me your final ranking when you decide.”

A joke? Yassen didn’t seem the type. “You’re probably the top of the people who are alive.”

“That wouldn’t surprise me. I have yet to meet another person who survived meeting you.”

Alex swallowed. Yassen’s words had not been an accusation. All the same, they were true. Alex knew perfectly well the trail of bodies left in his wake.

 “I’m not a killer.”

“Luckily for me, since you told me that you would kill me one day.” Yassen didn’t ask whether the threat still stood. That was good. Alex probably couldn’t kill the man, even if he had the weapon. At this point he wasn’t sure he wanted to. Yassen had saved his life too many times.

Alex looked away. “I’m not,” he repeated voicelessly.

 “No one is calling you one.” Yassen agreed.

“Yes, they are,” Alex insisted. “I’ve _killed_ people.”

Yassen raised an eyebrow. “That is not the same thing.”

“Killing people and being a killer?” Alex injected the maximum amount of sarcasm he could into the words. Yassen ignored the tone and deflected steadily.

“Having a choice and not having one.”

“I had choices.” At times it hadn’t felt like it, and there had been times his choices had seemed to be kill or die, but it had been him going back again and again into this world of death by the end. And it had been Alex who had picked up the gun and shot Julius. Yassen might think he was being kind, agreeing with Alex that he wasn’t a killer, but Alex wasn’t sure that it was true. He didn’t want to be a killer. Without Alex, though, people would still be alive. Yassen never would have shot Sayle without Alex there to stop Sayle’s plan. Damien Cray, Sarov, Rothman, Yu, all the others, and their bit player henchmen would still be around.

“Not good ones, I think.”

Alex felt tears well up in his eyes. Quickly he turned away and wiped his eyes. “I still killed people.”

No response forthcoming, Alex wiped his eyes again. Hopefully they weren’t red.

“How much have you slept recently?” Yassen asked slowly.

Alex moved a hand to hide his face, shifting the few papers on his desk aimlessly as a distraction. Not much, and not well. But his exhaustion was obvious without an answer. Sleep deprivation shoved clearly in the dark circles under his eyes. 

Yassen sighed. “Clean your desk.”

“Why?” Alex looked at his desk. It wasn’t messy—he never had more papers on it than he was given, and right now he had only a few sheets of invoices he was copying, a half-finished cup of tea, and what was left of his sandwich from lunch.

“Put your papers away and stack your dishes. You’re going to bed early.”

“I’m not done.” 

“You’ll finish tomorrow.” Yassen picked up his phone and typed a command idly. “They’ll have food in the kitchen. Eat and go to sleep.”

“No." Alex rebelled instantly. "I'm fine. I don’t need your pity.”

“You don’t have my pity,” Yassen replied. 

Alex frowned. “You’ve kept me almost overnight before. It hasn't mattered if I was exhausted before.” To the contrary, Yassen seemed to delight in keeping Alex at the brink of exhaustion.

“And now you will beg me to stay? Have I instilled some work ethic in you after all this time?" Yassen’s lip twitched in amusement at the idea. Maybe he was getting as much enjoyment at Alex’s tasks as Alex imagined. "You will not do your best work like this, I think."

“Like what?" Alex argued. No matter what Yassen said, the only reason for a dismissal this early was empathy or charity. Hired killers weren't known for their compassion. And while Alex may be willing to accept a degree of comfort from the man, Alex did  _not_ want Ian's killer sympathizing with the emotional turmoil the bastard had created. "And how does it matter how _good_ my work is; I'm copying words down!”

Yassen shook his head in mock commiseration. “As you have said, this work can wait. Goodnight, little one."


	2. A Midnight Stroll

Alex began to move to his destination before he decided it was the right choice. Alex hadn’t had a chance to select a logical destination yet, but even without taking the time to plan he knew this option was probably the only option that gave him even a chance of surviving the night.

He could hear people sneaking after him a couple of hallways back. They were trying to be quiet. In combat boots there was only so little sound they could make. But they would catch up, and soon, without a place to hide. They were coming from the exit to the building. If there was another way off the top floors, Alex didn’t know it.

Liam Wells had no reason to be in this part of the building. The executive suites and a few higher ups offices were nowhere near the small chambers of the under associates. One in the morning was not the time to be “delivering a message”. And it wouldn’t take 30 seconds before someone would find the flashdrive shoved in Alex’s sock. In five minutes he would be being interrogated, or shot in the head, unless…

Alex prayed he had the right room, and knocked three times, rapidly but not loudly. Too loud and others would hear. The men searching might already have heard. There was a decent chance the man he needed would be asleep right now, anyway. If he got called out into the hallway and Alex had already been caught, gods knew what the man would do. Torture him for a show, probably, whether he wanted to or not.

“Yes?” Yassen stepped back against the door as he opened it. If he had been asleep, he hid it well, standing serene as ever even in his bed clothes. Alex propelled himself inside the room, flinging himself against the wall.

 “Close the door now.” Alex said desperately. “Please.”

Yassen followed the instruction, looking over Alex with utter calmness. _Explain,_ his eyes said _._ Alex swallowed. “Your people are looking for me. They’ll kill me. Or worse.”

The Russian nodded, considering. “There’s a glass of white wine on the counter. Take it, and sit in one of the armchairs by the lamp.”

Alex looked around. He was in a small hallway kitchenette, with a living room beyond an open archway. The whole place was flickering with soft white lights – there was a candle on the kitchen counter, and near it two glasses of white. He paused for just a split second. Two glasses?

Alex took a glass to a matching white armchair and sat down, looking back. Unless he was living in a bad X-Men comic book where spies were sometimes 14-year-olds forced into service and some contract killers could resuscitate themselves and had psychic powers, and now it was the mandatory ‘two years later’ sequel, there was no way Yassen knew Alex would be here.

“Querida?” A fair brunette tiptoed into the room, walking straight to Yassen. She was half naked, wearing only a bra and underwear. _What. The. Fuck._ Alex watched with bemusement as Yassen muttered something low in Spanish, kissed her briefly, and steered her back to the bedroom, all without her catching sight of Alex.

“Interrupting something, am I?” Alex whispered dryly, when Yassen picked up the second glass and walked to join him.

Yassen ignored the comment and took the seat across from him. “Drink. At least half the glass.”

Alex took a sip. It was good wine, from what little experience he had with alcohol. A little dry, perhaps.  He didn’t normally drink, except the half glass he’d had on New Year’s Eve with the Pleasures.

 “It’s an odd question, Liam, that you want me to answer.” Yassen said. Alex listened, confused but assuming the man was going somewhere in his words.

“It’s not a secret what I do. You want to make more money than you are here, but you don’t necessarily want to continue along the path of being internationally wanted. You’re wanted in England for your brother’s murder, but elsewhere,” the Russian shrugged. “No one knows or cares about Liam Wells. I believe the best course of action would be to take a new identity, and I can help you with this. It would, of course, be expensive. Thankfully, I have been offering some solutions for the past…” he paused, and glanced at his watch.

“Thirty minutes,” Alex said, before drinking more. Thirty minutes ago, Liam had been in bed.

“I think forty,” Yassen said. “Of course, for the first few you were thanking me for the opportunities provided by working so closely in my office, and wondering if you were doing enough to meet your contractual obligations.”

Alex grimaced.

“Which was then followed up by asking for advice on how to stay alive in the criminal underworld that you are now in,” Yassen continued, “and wondering how to join the higher echelons of arms traffickers. My advice has included specific recommendations to change your accent, learn another language, and not annoy the criminal organizations that you join.”

“Did you give any advice on faking your death or breaking out of secure facilities, you know, on the off chance that someone shoots you?”

Yassen took a drink himself, eyes steady on Alex’s face. “No. Instead, I gave advice on eliminating people who are possibly crazy before they shoot you.”

“Are you seriously telling me to become a killer again?” Alex asked.

“Again?” Yassen inquired wryly. “You mean after the brother you murdered?

“No.”

“We agreed that you are too young to be a killer. And, if my memory serves longer than a few hours, not a killer at all.”

“Odd advice, considering.” He wasn’t used to alcohol, he’d never been a fan, but it wasn’t as strong as the few shots he’d had at New Years with the Pleasures last year. It might have been better to have stronger stuff, to fake the effect that he’d been here a while, drinking and being merry. Still, it would have to be enough. Someone was knocking on the door now, loud and insistent. Alex knocked back another swig. With luck, he would pass as just stupid enough to knock on the door of a notorious contract killer for career advice, instead of stupid enough to hope that a notorious contract killer would grant sanctuary to an enemy agent.

Yassen rose wordlessly, and passed the archway to the door. As the door swung inward, Alex could see the outline of a dark man, Hispanic perhaps, standing even with the assassin. “We have a problem, sir.”

“I have a young man here, seeking advice.” Yassen gestured minutely at Alex. The guard nodded at him. “What happened?”

“Has he been here long? We had an intruder, ten or seven minutes ago. In Michael’s office.”

“About forty minutes.”

“Then it’s not him, sir.”

“Did the intruders find anything?”

“We think they took information.” At Yassen’s cold gaze, the man continued. “We think we know how.”  
“How?” The Russian asked coolly.

“There’s a missing flashdrive. A flashdrive with receipts.” The guard stopped short of incriminating words, conscious of the odd person on the room. Alex shifted, and took another drink. One more and his glass would be empty. An uncomfortable smile stayed on his face, the same as he would keep if he were mildly uncomfortable, and a dumb criminal from England here to escape murder charges and start a new life.

“I see.” Yassen gestured toward Alex. “I’ll see him out, and join you in a minute. Go see where the other new hires are. Bring any that are awake to me.”

“Yes sir.” The guard nodded and left. Alex dropped his eyes to the man’s combat boots as he left.

“Your guards don’t exactly have quiet footwear.”

“He’s a military man, not a spy.” Yassen agreed. The two of them waited for a minute, eyeing each other. Yassen’s gaze was steady, Alex’s slowly turning rebellious. “You know I’m going to need the flashdrive back, Alex.”

“I didn’t come here to give it back.”

“You came here to save your life,” Yassen dismissed. “You will have another chance to steal what you are looking for, if you’re alive.”

With reluctance, Alex leaned down to take the flashdrive from his sock. He tossed it at the killer, who caught it with his usual grace. Yassen inspected it briefly. “There were not two?”

“No.”

“I have someone waiting for me in my bed, and you look like you could use yours. I’ll call someone to escort you.”

“Someone to make sure I don’t get lost on the way there?”

“Yes.” Yassen stood and reached for Alex’s empty glass, taking his and Alex’s to the counter. From Alex’s seat, he could an illuminated cell phone screen.

 “Someone’s waiting.”  Following a gesture to the door, Alex turned slowly to leave. It felt wrong to leave without saying thanks, somehow. Or at least asking why.

“Saving me is a lot of effort to go through, for a friendship with my dad.” Alex said, carefully. “I’m still not him.”

“No one is anybody else. Don’t try to be.” Alex paused a moment, unsure what was meant by the comment. Nothing harmful, looking at the Russian. Yassen’s lip twitched at his hesitance. Alex took that as his cue to leave. Opening the door, he could see Joel waiting sleepily outside.

“And Liam?” Alex paused at the door, looked over his shoulder. “We’re starting tomorrow early, at 4:30 a.m. I expect you to be on time.”

“Yes sir.”


	3. A Temporary Peace

It felt like only minutes after Alex had fallen into bed before the alarm blared through the dormitories, waking the lower level employees. Alex rose blearily out of bed, stumbling into the hallway. Connor looked similarly ruffled, rubbing his eyes with exhaustion.

“Is this a drill?”

“I guess,” Alex lied. What would Yassen end up doing, as the head of security, when the culprit had already been relieved of the evidence of his crime? Would he pin it on someone he didn’t like? If Yassen chose someone else to die just so Alex could live, well, Alex couldn’t say he’d be surprised. But he wouldn’t let it happen in front of him.  

“Evacuation time, I guess,” Connor sighed, heading towards the door. Alex followed. Other employees joined as they headed outside.

Outside, Joel had a clipboard. He checked off a name for every person that walked outside. Joel waved two fingers at Alex in wry recognition of the night’s events. “Catch some sleep, Liam?”

“Maybe two minutes.”

“I know where you were, so I’ll clear you fast, but you’re going to have to wait out here until the building is cleared.”

“How long will that take?”

“My suggestion? Get comfortable.” Joel slapped Alex on the back and moved to direct several employees to strip to their underwear for a search. Groaning, Alex wandered onto the grass near the building. If the alarm shut off soon and the sound of guards noisily patting people around lowered maybe he could catnap outside. Yassen’s men would turn every room inside out until something was found. And if something was found, Alex would need to figure out how to avoid someone hurting for his own escapades.

Alex put his head in his hands and groaned. The long night was growing longer.

\--AR--

By 10 a.m., Alex was awake in the office, but barely. Sporadically his head drifted down onto the desk, only for Alex to jerk alert with a start.

“Wake up, Liam. It’s work hours.”

Alex frowned. “There was an alarm, sir. In the night. It’s a bit disruptive for sleep.”

Yassen deflected the response. “Just a routine security check, I’m sure.”

Alex sighed. “Was it necessary? Did you even find the person who broke in last night?”

“We will. Security measures have been increased, and holes in our operations checked.”

“Make sure you check everyone. You never know who’s hiding secret alliances or agendas.” Alex looked at his arm and turned it around for inspection. “Or double agents.”

A knock at the entrance of the office interrupted the conversation and signaled the food cart. Especially after an early morning alarm, there had been several pots of coffee brought around. Alex had missed the last pot of coffee, an hour ago, while on a restroom break.

“Una taza de café ?” The lunch woman wheeled the cart in cheerily. Alex  got up bleerily to see Yassen pouring the last of the coffee into his mug. At Alex’s resigned glare, Yassen held the empty pot up.

“We’re out,” Yassen said.

Alex sighed and moved to his seat, pinching himself slightly to stay awake. Yassen looked amused for a second. “She’ll bring more back, if you ask.”

“How do I say that in Spanish?”

“Try.”

Alex searched in his head, remembering school Spanish. At least in Spain Spanish, he  thought he knew the words.

Moving to the door, he caught the woman wheeling her cart up the hall. “ Senora, puedes traer más café por favor?”

The woman looked around and smiled. She gestured Alex out into the hall. Looking to Yassen for confirmation – usually any reason to leave Yassen’s sight was denied – he received a brief nod. Alex walked down the hall and joined the woman walking to the small kitchenette that served as her place for small supplies and storing the day’s cold and reheatable food from the cafeteria.

Moments later, a fresh cup of coffee from the newly filled pot in hand, Alex went back to his job. Yassen was considering him with interest.

 “Have you found time to go to the gym?”

“It’s a bit out of my hands, if I want time to sleep and eat.” Alex muttered. “So no.”

 “David, the Israeli man you flew in with, works out every day from 8 to 10. I’ll release you early if you stay with him.”

Was this kindness, or an opening for Yassen to do the work Alex couldn’t be there for? Not that Yassen didn’t leave often enough, leaving others in the office in his place, but this would be the first suggestion of Alex leaving this room.

“Is that the only option?” Usually he only stayed at work until 9:30 anyway, since the dining hall closed at 10:20. It would be better if he could get the time bumped from 7 to 9 at night. It would leave him time to sneak around when the guards switched shifts at 9:15 and eat dinner afterwards.

“Otherwise I can’t spare you.” Yassen left the reason unspoken, but Alex understood clearly enough—Yassen trusted David to keep him close, and he thought Alex needed time to exercise enough to let him off the hook for two hours a night. Alex should accept before the offer was rescinded.

“When do I start?”

“Tonight.”

Alex groaned. He needed sleep, not an intensive workout after an almost sleepless night. “Can it be tomorrow?”

Yassen raised an eyebrow. “It will start tonight, and it will go every night, unless you’re sick enough that you can’t get out of bed.”

“Fine.” Fingering a couple of sheets of paper, Alex considered the freedom the time might end up giving him. It would be difficult to get away from David. Yassen would surely give specific check in instructions for David, to make sure Alex was actually at the gym. Lull David into false security, maybe pretend to be sick or sprain an ankle one day, though, and the possibility of sneaking away could be real.

Until that point, though, Alex would have two hours away from this office every day. He would get to enjoy himself for the first time in weeks.

“Thanks.”

\--AR—

Alex picked his pen up for the tenth time, before putting it back down.

He sighed.

Tomorrow he was going into town with Joel and a few other men to pick up the monthly shipment of canned goods from the local supermarket. Yassen had foisted the job off on him to clear him out of the way, probably while an important meeting occurred. In town, Alex would ask for a minute to go drop off a letter for his Great Aunt Helen. A month ago Alex had memorized this address. He was to send a letter at least once every two weeks informing his aunt, aka the director, on how he was doing. So far Alex had managed to send letters into town for drop off with David and Connor on their Sunday’s off. And they all said the same message: “I’m doing well, sorry I haven’t written more, no news here.”

Which led to the problem. Alex had an address to send his note to, and he was reasonably sure that Yassen’s surveillance over him ended somewhere before the local postal agency, but he didn’t have any information to put in his note.

‘Yassen Gregorovich is alive, he takes milk with his coffee, he’d rather I leave this mission alive, and Martin Frobisher exists and I spotted him from afar one time last week carrying a large black briefcase,’ Alex imagined penning. Great. The Director in D.C. would not consider that the sort of world shaking intel he paid Alex for.

Alex considered faking sick during the grocery run and sneaking back to investigate the meeting. Joel would text Yassen though. And then the Russian would leave his meeting to track Alex down. And then it would be an even longer period before Alex would be free to run into town and deliver the message carrying whatever information he gathered in that time, probably not until after whatever deal was discussed had fully occurred, rather defeating the purpose of gathering the intel in the first place.

 No news was good news, except for when it wasn’t. And Alex had a quite vivid idea that his boss would not consider no news good news. Unfortunately, no news was what he had. For the eleventh and final time, Alex picked up his pen.

“Dear Aunt Helen,

I’m sorry to report that there’s been no news here. My job keeps me busy, too busy to enjoy the Argentinian views, but I’m eating regularly and in good health.

Sorry I haven’t called.

Lots of love,

Liam”.

\--AR—

The weaponry was going to be handed over soon. Yassen was sending Alex to sit in the back corner of his office more and more, while he conversed with armed men in hushed tones. When Alex tried to sit perfectly still and listen for what they were saying, all he picked up was that they were speaking in other languages, Spanish and German mostly. Dates and times, but Alex couldn’t hear well enough to know where and when.

The mood in the dining hall was rushed. People ate quickly, with few conversations or smiles exchanged.

“It’s happening soon, isn’t it?” Alex asked Enobakhare at early morning breakfast. “The big weapons sale they’re doing.”

“We’re doing, and I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the Nigerian replied. He wrinkled his forehead dramatically. “What does that mean, a weapons sale? Is this something you’re hearing about at work? Did Gregorovich tell you something?”

Alex almost denied the accusation, but he stopped. Enobakhare was lying. He knew an exchange was happening soon, and clearly knew no one had told Alex anything, at least not on purpose.

“Just something I overheard. Sorry, I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

“No, you shouldn’t of.” Enobakhare reached out and squeezed his hand. “I like you, Liam. If you hear anything, forget it. Don’t worry so much. Just do your job.”

Do your job, you have work to do, go back to work--they seemed to be the only phrase Alex heard these days. “That’s all I’m trying to do.”

\--AR—

“Can you put music on?”

“Some sort of music?” the Russian queried.

“Not Norwegian Death Metal.”

Yassen half smiled and shook his head. Exasperated, Alex rolled his eyes.

“Is there music _you_ like? You listen to things on your phone for hours at a time.”

“I’m keeping up on the news.”

“Not always. I can hear parts of it. Some of it is music.”

“Then perhaps you tell me – what type of music do I enjoy?”

Alex shrugged weakly. Violin music? He couldn’t hear it well, just enough to know that at times the noise was constant in the way that music would be. It was never loud enough to truly annoy or share the melody. Instead faint whispers occasionally reminded Alex that sound existed aside from the creaks of chairs and shuffling of papers.

“You really like Norwegian Death Metal, and are willing to play that?”

“No.”

“I am literally dying of boredom.” Alex paused dramatically. “I thought you liked me alive. Oh well. Soon you won’t have the problem of keeping me alive.”

Yassen gave him a nonplussed look. Sensing the need to clarify, Alex added, “Because I’ll be dead. Of boredom.”

“I’ll order a coffin.”

Abruptly Alex’s jocular mood shattered. Memories of a conversation with Jack long ago resurfaced. According to Jack, Alex had been “not himself” after returning from Russia. He had nightmares of Sarov blowing his head off in front of him nearly every night. He’d barely mustered energy for football practice. Tom had gotten tired of asking Alex if he’d slept enough. And the school psychiatrist had called Alex into her office so often he was beginning to lose more class time to her than to his missions with MI6.

 He’d come home from school one day to find Jack crying to herself in the kitchen. She’d been to Ian’s grave to bring fresh roses by, as she did every month or so. And she’d started to think about how close Alex had come to ending up there himself only a few weeks ago.

The conversation became Alex apologizing again and again for helping MI6 with their job. And Jack apologizing again and again for not being able to stop the bastards in suits from showing up and making Alex do the job of adults.

“Liam?”

“It’s fine,” Alex responded. “Don’t bother. The state will buy me one in a few years anyway.”

“Thinking of quitting?” Yassen inquired thoughtfully.

Alex exhaled carefully. “Not yet.”

\--AR—

“Sir, we had a break in.”

Yassen froze momentarily, thinking back to the last time he had seen Alex. He’d released Alex early, after asking David to switch his gym schedule for the day. He had hosted Marvin Frobisher in his office for a business discussion, and Yassen had every desire to keep his boss from meeting Alex unless necessary.

“Where?”

The guard shifted. “Frobisher’s office, sir.”

Alex. Any other possibility would seem outlandish. “Have you found the man responsible?”

“The security cameras in Frobisher’s offices were disabled.”

“How?”

“Someone yanked the wires out of the control panel in the security room. The guard had left to investigate a ‘weird noise’.” The guard appeared embarrassed. Possibly he did not realize how immense the consequences of the break in could be.

Pushing past the faint nausea he felt, Yassen gave his orders. “Find Liam Wells. Bring him here, immediately.”

“Ok,” the guard, Hendricks, said cautiously. “Brown haired kid, works in your office, I’ve seen him a few times. Do you know where he is? Your office?”

“He should be at the gym.” Yassen glanced at his watch. “No. Check his dorm. He should be showering and resting before dinner. I told him to eat at seven.”

“Anywhere else?” Hendricks asked. “Should I start with the gym?”

“He was given a schedule. Check his dorm,” Yassen said shortly. Hendricks nodded and left.

This was his fault. He shouldn’t have let Alex leave early today. The last time he’d sent Alex off before the end of the day, thinking the boy too exhausted to continue for the day, Alex had napped for a few hours and then broken into a secured office. Yassen had intended to check in with David, to text and make sure Alex was at the gym and out of trouble. He’d forgotten. He had intended to send the ex-militia Nigerian man to sit with Alex at the dorms until dinner and after, and he’d forgotten that as well.

Now the staff knew of a break-in. They would have to discover if information was missing. Valuable information of the sort Frobisher kept in his office would easily justify men losing lives. Sparing Alex’s life would mean explaining why, and the explanation would require merit. Sparing Alex’s life would have to come after answers were given. Answers that would not be given freely.

Heavily, Yassen reached for his bag. He had a Swiss Army Knife within. That device would serve an interrogation for at least a while with minimum permanent damage.

A knock at the door signaled the time of truth. “Sir, I have him.” Hendricks walked in, Alex following behind.

“You needed me, sir?”

There was nothing on Alex’s idle expression that indicated guilt, or any suspicion of why he was there.

“There was a break-in. I’m wondering who is responsible.”

The expression on Alex’s face shifted. Fear? Surprise?

“Where were you at 3:30 today, Liam? You weren’t at work.”

“You gave me the afternoon off; you had a meeting.”

“I did. Where were you?”

“I was at the gym, with David, you set it up. I wasn’t doing anything,” Alex insisted.

“I have ways of finding out if you’re telling the truth.”

Alex swore angrily. Yassen viewed Alex impassively.

 “Then do it! I wasn’t doing anything besides working out. Ask David. Look at your cameras.”

“Was anyone else there?”

“Some guy, I don’t know him, black hair, medium height, red bike shorts, he was at the stationary bike, I think he works in the building your office is in.” Alex was glowering, and even Yassen grudgingly admitted that the spy was a fine actor. If Yassen hadn’t known the boy, he would almost have believed him innocent.

“I can certainly do that,” Yassen agreed softly. “Perhaps I also ask you again?” Rustling through his bag until he found his tool, Yassen then flicked open the blade. Alex paled and stepped back. Hendricks pulled his gun out and raised it against Alex’s head, although he left the safety on.

A crackling from behind Yassen’s desk interrupted. A walkie talkie burst into life with a sharp static burst. “Command four, command four, this is Joel.”

Yassen glanced at Alex. Furious brown eyes met his own. Yassen discarded his knife on his desk for the walkie. “This is command four.”

“We have a man in custody of stolen goods. Over.”

Alex smirked coldly. Yassen gestured to Hendricks and the gun was lowered.

“Where are you, Joel?”

“Coming to you, sir.”

Hendricks looked to Yassen for a sign of how to proceed. “Sir? Should we keep him here?”

“Yes.”

Alex continued to sneer triumphantly, though his eyes flickered between the knife on the desk and the door.

Moments later Joel announced his presence with a tap at the door.

Connor tread inside the room with an expression of lingering doom written across his face.

Yassen looked Connor over.

“Who do you work for?”

The man, Connor, shook his head. Joel smirked. “Irish intelligence, apparently. His face was flagged by our new software, when I ran the list of names you gave me. One routine security check later, and he’s trying to stash a folder of government contracts into his mattress.” Joel looked at Alex, and noted with surprise the lowered gun pointed at his leg. “Is Liam in trouble? He wasn’t on that list. Want me to run his face?”

“No.” Yassen dismissed. “If it was this man, then he is not our spy.”

“We’re fairly positive,” Joel smirked.

“Check his fingerprints. Print his background check. And check Liam’s story of being at the gym with David. Get their arrival and departure times from the security cameras outside the gym.” Yassen looked at Alex directly. “Go back to your room. Stay there tonight. I have a guard who will come check on all of the new hires, and you are all to stay in your quarters until you are told new orders. Clear?”

Alex looked at Connor. The Irish spy had a haunted look. Both of them knew these would be the last moments of the Irishman’s life. “Clear.”

Yassen pushed Alex, none too gently, towards Joel. Joel smiled cheerily and ushered Alex out the door. Alex looked back reluctantly to see Yassen closing the door.

“Sorry about that, Liam,” Joel said. “Nasty business there, don’t worry about it. No one’s going to hurt you.”

“Someone will hurt him.” Alex looked at Joel at the exact moment a scream of pain reverberated down the hall.

Alex whirled around to the face the door. Joel reached out reassuringly. “Don’t worry about it, kid, it’s just business. Sometime things get nasty.”

“That’s business?”

“Sometimes.” Joel shrugged.

Alex stopped himself from lashing out. Liam Wells might be scared of the scene unfolding, but he had understood that this wasn’t a completely legal business when he joined up. Liam Wells had killed his own brother while drunk, then decided to join an arms development and sales company. Alex Rider’s mission was to be Liam Wells.

 Breathing deeply, Alex forced himself to move forward. “What now?”

“We follow instructions. You go stay in your room, I keep check on all the personnel. Things will go back to normal in no time.” Joel clapped a hand on Alex’s shoulder with comradery. “Don’t worry, you might even be back to work by tomorrow morning.”

\--AR—

Alex had shown up to the office on time, but he almost hadn’t. He remembered the scream echoing in the hallway yesterday. Had thought of it while tossing sleeplessly for hours in the night.

“Good morning, Liam,” Yassen greeted casually from his desk.

Ignoring the greeting, Alex took his seat and began his work for the day. Occasionally he caught himself staring at Yassen, rolling anger fueling his fascination.

“Do you want something, Liam?” Yassen wasn’t even looking up, impersonal bastard.

“Is Connor still alive?”

Yassen raised an eyebrow. “Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t worry about him. He’s nothing to you.”

“Don’t make it personal?” Alex suggested angrily.

“You will, because that’s who you are. But try not to.”

“You won’t, because that’s who you are,” Alex returned. “You almost died, and you still don’t make it personal.”

Yassen rose. He pulled his chair over to that side of the room and sat down facing Alex. He leaned forward. Alex glanced at the ceiling, trying to spot whatever camera Yassen was moving to avoid.

“Consider, Liam,” Yassen said softly, “What would happen to you at this moment if I didn’t make anything personal. Would you like to join the man you knew as Connor, wherever he is?”

“Where is he?” Alex challenged. He lowered his voice to mimic Yassen’s, his one concession to hiding his true emotions from whatever system monitored the room.

“Not where you want to be.”

“Alive?”

“It doesn’t matter. You can’t find him or help him.”

“Maybe I do want to be where he is.”

Yassen leaned close, and placed his left hand on Alex’s wrist. “Be careful what you wish for. This is a dangerous place for spies to be, little one.”

Unable to suppress the shiver, Alex pulled his arm free. Yassen smiled dangerously and pulled his chair back across the room. Words Yassen had said two weeks ago floated through his head. _“_ _I have a hard time imagining hurting you. But if I needed to, I would._ _”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your thoughts feed me.


	4. Forty-Five Minutes

Gym time with David had been a privilege, Alex assumed. A reward for staying out of trouble, and another way to keep him busy that freed Yassen from the job.

It was a revoked privilege. One he missed dearly. Having two spies in the compound had made Yassen tighten security, and Alex was the one to pay.

No, Alex scolded himself. Connor had paid. Connor was dead at this point, perhaps buried in a field somewhere. Too much time had passed for the man to still be alive. He couldn’t have any useful information left.

If he was alive…Alex shuddered. Any man that could hold out six days had more strength than Alex. He wasn’t sure, but he felt certain he would break in hours.

Which made his idiotic plan even more foolish. Perhaps it was just a move born out of a desire to move, now that his gym time was gone.

Forty five minutes.

Alex had timed his walk from the cafeteria to Yassen’s office every day for the first month. It took six minutes and thirty seconds when Alex was walking with a purpose. It took nearly eleven when he meandered.

Alex had meandered every day the past week. Which meant Yassen was expecting him ten minutes after mealtime, not six. Which meant, under normal circumstances, Alex could have 4 minutes to break into the offices in the executive building without arousing suspicion.

It wasn’t possible.

Everyday now Enobakhare walked into the cafeteria and charged for Alex. Whatever he had been told - whether he knew Alex was under suspicion or whether he thought it was routine security measures – the Nigerian hid it well. He played up his friendship with Liam. If Alex was Liam, he might have thought the man had only a lonely fixation on their companionship.

Alex knew it was an assignment. He knew Enobakhare would report it if Alex was a minute late to the cafeteria or was leaving a few minutes behind schedule. The Nigerian reached for his phone too quickly in these instances for it to be a coincidence.

But Enobakhare had a different job during lunch today. Joel had caught them both at the end of breakfast and informed the man of a last-minute shipment coming in at noon and told Enobakhare that he was the supervisor in charge. And Alex hadn’t seen Enobakhare pick up the phone to tell Yassen that this meeting had come up.

So far Alex’s supervision had been constant. But people made mistakes. And Alex was staking his job as a spy on the fact that Enobakhare forgot to appoint someone else Alex’s keeper.

Lunch was thirty minutes. The walk to the cafeteria was ten minutes.  The walk back was ten. Take away five to be safe, and Alex had found forty-five minutes to do his job.

Get the files that could take down Frobisher.

“I’m going to lunch, sir,” Alex said. Yassen glanced at him and gave a curt nod. The two had been nothing but cordial since Yassen’s threat days ago.

Alex tucked his desk chair in, grabbed his jacket, and left the room. The hallway clock said ten minutes until noon. Forty-five minutes started now.

Alex left the building and veered left, not right. Few people were out. The weather was beautiful but chilly, and Alex considered jogging to the next building. No – there was a pair pacing the perimeter close enough to notice the fast pace.

Two minutes fifty-four, two minutes fifty-five.

The executive building itself wasn’t guarded. Alex had learned that the first week, while intel gathering for his first attempted break in. The building mainly held the living quarters of the higher ups – Joel, Yassen, other men Alex rarely interacted with but had gathered the named of from passing conversation. Mainly men that did not live here. None were here now, if Alex was correct.  It was only on the top floor that a few executive office suites were laid out. And there _were_ guards on that floor.

If Alex was correct and none of the men that worked in those offices were hear now, luck was on his side. Heisley, Frobisher himself, his pale accountant looking friend – they were definitely not here. Alex had seen them leave as a group two weeks ago, and they had only visited twice before while he was here. The time Alex had broken into the building before it had seemed half deserted other than the guards. This island held the records, but it didn’t hold the fun.

 Alex walked into the building as if he had every right to be there, and turned right into the stairs, ignoring the elevators. Elevators were a trap to spies.

Inside the stairs Alex barely contained himself from running. Four minutes thirty-eight. Four minutes thirty-nine. Alex pushed himself to walk faster, walk confidently, and ignore the man he passed on the way up. The man didn’t ask why Alex was there, and Alex didn’t say hello. Five minutes fifty-three. Five minutes fifty-four. He was finally on the last flight of stairs, and Alex stopped. He opened the door quietly and peered outside. There was no one in the hallway. Only one other door was in this section before the hallway veered left. Alex glanced at the door and then walked forward. 

Around the corner, a short, brooding man with an AK-47 was pacing the hallway.

Fuck. Alex pulled himself back out of sign.

Was the gun another new security measure? It was overkill. Except, Alex realized, that right now there was a secret agent about to try and burst in after copies of documents. The AK-47 had a deterring effect.

If Alex knocked the man out somehow, it would come back to him. Someone else would find the guard and raise the alarm. Yassen would know. There had to be another way.

Alex looked up. Movable ceiling tiles.

Alex doubled back to the room he had passed. The door was unlocked. Inside was a guest chamber, occupied only by the spare bed, night table, and desk and chair typical of any motel room. There wasn’t even a wardrobe.

Alex stepped onto the desk. There were more ceiling tiles in here. He shoved up on one, until it gave way and moved to the side. Then came the part he worried about…lifting himself up. If the ceiling tiles collapsed under his weight, the guard would hear. With an AK 47 in hand, Alex may end up dead before he could try and escape.

Miraculously they held. Alex pulled himself up, into a hunched dog position to fit within the ceiling tiles that served as the floor, and the top of the ceiling.

 Alex pulled his ipod’s headphone cords out of his jacket pocket. David had given the old ipod and headphones to Alex a week before the gym privileges had stopped, and now they served a valuable purpose – a starting point.

Edging along inside the dark ceiling with a slow determination, Alex progressed from one side of the ceiling to the other. He stopped every fifteen feet to first listen at the ceiling tiles and then, if he didn’t hear the guard below, to crack open a tile and look underneath. First he saw a big office with a locked file cabinet, then he passed the guard’s pacing, and then there was what seemed to be a small kitchen.

Alex paused. He had to think critically. This may be the only opportunity he had to break in, and he was assuming that there hadn’t already been an alarm raised somewhere else on campus for the missing CIA spy. But no, he thought not. The guard that was pacing the floor would have started searching rooms if he had received a notification of a missing person – and more guards would come. This was the secure part of the building, where all the files were kept. Yassen had access in his room but he was there, watching the room.

The darkness was silent. With a flinch at how loud his every move was, Alex pushed the tile back into place and moved two over. Now he was over the kitchen counter. He pushed the new tile aside and lowered himself to the counter. Quietly he started opening cabinets, looking for – yes.

Alex held up the paring knife with success. Ian had taught him to lockpick with a paring knife for a ninth birthday trick. Alex had wanted a magician, but he’d gotten a lock-picking lesson after cake. Reluctantly, Alex admitted Ian’s lesson had been more practical.

Back into the ceiling Alex went, knowing all the while that if the guard heard a sound it was all over. Thirty feet back in the direction of his starting point/headphones, Alex lifted the tile to the office with the locked filing cabinet. He turned tile after tile over until he found the tile over the cushioned chair and dropped into it.  

He pressed the knife into the first lock as far as it would go, and twisted and turned it, listening for the click of the lock giving way. For a moment Alex was afraid that he would hear nothing, and the break in would be in vain.

There was a slight click.

Alex froze. Did he imagine it? Pulling the knife out, he slid it in between the drawer and the filing cabinet until he could push the lock in.

The lock gave.

Pulling the drawer out eagerly, Alex looked for anything he could take. Any proof of wrong doing.

File folders full of tax receipts lay inside. Alex shook his head and went to work on the next look. There may lay some sign of illicit behavior in the receipts, but he would never find them in the time he had. Alex wasn’t an accountant, and he wasn’t sure he would know what the numbers signified even if they were clear to others.

What he needed was a dossier of arms weapons, or a file marked ‘top secret’, or a flash drive marked ‘weapon sales 2002.”

Alex stared at the flash drive. This couldn’t be real, could it? He looked at the file next to the one the flash drive had been in. The hanging file was also labeled weapons sales 2002, so perhaps this was just a scanned case of the documents kept in this file folder.

Alex looked at the file folder next in line. This one was labelled ‘weapon sales 2001’, and inside was only another flash drive. Behind it was a folder marked ‘weapon sales 2001 part 3’.

So maybe luck was on Alex’s side. Again.

He needed a computer.

Alex clambered back up into the ceiling. Dust hung in the air around him, and he tried desperately to suppress his coughs. He pressed his sleeve against his jacket until his breathing calmed, and then, moving as slowly as he could bear, he pushed the ceiling tile back into position. He crawled west. He had come from the east, and he knew that room didn’t have any technology that could aid him.

Alex paused, and pressed his ear against the tile below him. Was this a new room? He couldn’t tell. He pushed a tile aside quietly, and pushed his face close to the crack. It was an office. A big room, white walls on three sides and a giant window facing the sun. There was no one in the room.

Alex pushed the tile aside and clambered down, dropping the last few feet and landing with a sound he was sure the guard heard. Quickly he rushed to the door. There was an eye hole. He peered out and saw no one outside. After waiting a few moments until he was sure no one was coming, Alex breathed a sigh of relief and approached the desk. The computer would surely be locked, but Alex didn’t need any new documents. He didn’t need to use the main user’s profile. Alex moved the mouse around until the screen flickered to life. Quickly he pressed the ‘guest’ account and opened internet explorer.

The time was 12:24. He had, at most, 16 minutes. Preferably eleven.

Gmail opened quickly, and Alex logged on as fast as he could. He plugged in the flashdrive, opened the contents, and dragged them into an open email.

Slowly the documents uploaded, one by one, at a painful pace. Nine minutes left. Seven minutes. Alex sent one email full of documents, and then another. Five minutes left. Fuck. He was going to have to use that emergency 5 minutes.

Only a quarter of the documents had been uploaded and emailed. Was that enough to convict Frobisher, or allow the United States to place an arrest warrant on him the next time he landed in Washington?

It would have to be. These documents were his job, but Alex was in no rush to be late to his ‘job’. The only way he survived this island intact was if Yassen didn’t find out that he had broken in.

Alex logged out of the computer and looked to see if there was a connected bathroom. There was. He grabbed some toilet paper and swabbed at the keyboard, obstructing any finger prints that would prove Alex had been here.

Alex clambered into the ceiling again, and none too quietly raced through the darkness to his starting point. His headphone cords were still there.

How often did anyone come into this section of the ceiling? Not enough for it to be viewed a security risk. Alex left the knife and the flashdrive where his headphones had been before going down how he had come up.

The guard was not in view when Alex descended. A clock was. Twelve thirty-five. Five minutes – the emergency minutes Alex had not wanted to use.

Without regard to watchers, Alex sprinted down the stairs. Forty-five minutes and twenty-three seconds. Forty-five minutes and twenty-four seconds.

There were still some people outside. Alex slowed to a walk.

Twelve thirty-seven. Alex had three minutes left before this was suspicious.

“I’m back.”

Yassen ignored him.

Business as usual.

He had made it. Time would tell whether the evidence he passed was enough to get him off this island, or whether he had succeeded in not getting caught.

-AR-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whenever I write an AR chapter after a while away, I reread parts of the books to remember the writing style. And when I do, I remember how much of Alex's success as an agent depends on luck. 
> 
> This chapter follows that pattern. I could make excuses for why I'm a lazy writer...but blaming Alex's success on luck is just such a convenient plot device.


	5. Drowning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a warning...violence ahead. Nothing gory - I have been studying Snakehead for the past two days, trying to keep the level of violence and action similar to the original books. But still, it's there.

\--AR—

It was just past three o’clock when they came for him. Joel and Enobakhare walked into his room with guns drawn. Alex was dead asleep one moment, too far gone for dreaming, and the next he was being manhandled out of bed and pushed against a wall.

“Rise and shine sleeping lamb,” Joel whispered in his ear. At the same moment, Enobakhare grabbed his wrists and twisted them together, behind his back.

“What are you _doing_ ,” Alex hissed, pushing back against the handcuffs the Nigerian was forcing on him.

“Mr. Gregorovich wants to see you.” The handcuffs snapped closed with a final click, holding his arms behind him. They were tight, cutting off circulation. Enobakhare paused, looked over Alex, and enfolded him in a bear hug. “What did you do, Liam? I liked you.”

“Liked?” Alex choked out.

Enobakhare ruffled Alex’s hair, affectionately, and twisted him around. With an arm firmly on Alex’s upper arm, and Joel’s gun pointed at Alex’s head, the two marched him out of the dormitory quarters that had been his home for the past two months.

They shoved Alex outside, into the cold fog of the early morning. It was completely dark aside from a few lampposts lighting the newly graveled path from the general dormitories to the main building. Alex looked up at the few bright stars peeking through fog, and sliver crescent of the waxing moon. “Move,” Joel insisted, pushing forward with the gun.

The Nigerian input the code for the building entrance to open. Alex noted without surprise that the code had been changed.

“In,” Joel commanded. Alex ambled forward. Enobakhare’s hand on his arm pushed him to the office he had spent a month of misery working in.

“I didn’t do anything,” Alex said.

Neither of the men replied. Enobakhare released Alex to hold the door open. Thinking of Connor’s mysterious fate, Alex shuffled inside.

“No,” Alex said, pulling back as soon as he stepped inside. “No, no, no, I didn’t do anything,”

The gun slammed into the back of Alex’s head, and he stumbled forward. Steel tipped boots slammed into his ankles, knocking him onto his knees, onto a small brown carpet that hadn’t been in the office before.

“Is this because of Connor? Did he say I knew something? I never met him,” Alex rambled, knowing it was futile, but he needed to try and delay this and he couldn’t reveal the truth.

“Connor?”

“Luis.” Enobakhare grabbed Alex’s hair and twisted it back. “We got his name out of him on day two. Think you’ll last that long, Liam?” There was something ugly in Enobakhare’s voice – perhaps the betrayal he felt after pretending to be Alex’s best friend on the island for so long.

Alex was spared from answering by a long, black cloth tied quickly around his head. Joel put the gun on Yassen’s desk. He grabbed Alex by the shoulders and manhandled him forward, before the blue bin half filled with water.

“Have some advice – don’t use all your breath struggling,” Joel said, and then he was shoving Alex’s head down, into the freezing water.

Alex froze, trying not to breath in, counting the seconds he was under. They couldn’t risk him dying before he told them anything. Seconds ticked by, and just as Alex was beginning to shake uncontrollably and gasp in water they pulled him up.

Water drenched into his nightshirt, pulling the thin cotton fabric towards his skin.

Alex tried to beg around the gag, to offer information. A hand on his head shoved him down again.

Alex reached with his handcuffed arms for someone, anyone. His hands made out the edge of a shirt, and he grabbed onto it with one hand. With the other he tapped desperately. Tap, tap, tap. _I surrender. Let me_ go.

Steady hands pulled him up. Alex shook violently, ice cold water dripping onto the carpet underneath. The two men gave him some time to gasp for air around the soaking wet gag.

Joel stepped into view. “You’re not the brightest, are you?”

 Alex blinked. They could insult him all they wanted, just let him speak and he would say whatever they wanted to hear. Not the truth, no, but a good enough fiction. He needed to figure out what they knew, and then he could talk around it. Yassen knew his name already, so he could admit to that. The CIA might call it blowing his cover, but fuck, it was already blown.

Joel sighed. He reached for the gag, dug a finger into Alex’s cheek to pull it out.

“You feel this?” Alex waited for the man to continue, and Joel gave a hard yank on the gag, jerking Alex’s head to the side. “You feel this?” Joel repeated.

With the small amount of give he had, Alex nodded.

Joel smiled patiently. “Do you think we would put this on you if we wanted you to talk?”

Before Alex had time to process what they were saying, the Nigerian man shoved him down again, and he was drowning.

He knew it won’t kill him, knew that the water was only a means to prolong his panic and pain before they questioned him. It didn’t matter. The time underwater sends him into violent panics. When they pull him up, he’s sobbing for breath and trying not to swallow the water from the gag. He fell into coughing fits three or four times. One time, Enobakhare worried enough to remove the gag completely. The moment Alex stopped coughing long enough to breathe and say “please,” Joel tied the gag around his face once again.

“Give him a break,” Alex heard Enobakhare say as they pull him up the fourteenth time. “Let him breathe a second.”

Joel smiled. “Liam, whatever your name is, perhaps you ought to say thank you to our friend here? He thinks you need a moment to breathe.”

Alex tensed. No good was coming out of Joel’s tone. Moments later a fist slammed into the side of his head, knocking him to the ground.

“Better?” Joel asked.

Alex struggled weakly as Joel pulled him back to the plastic bin.

“Get more water. He’s splashed enough of it out.”

The Nigerian spent several minutes carting water into the room with a white plastic bucket, dumping it into the bin, and repeating. Alex thought he took longer than necessary. Perhaps the false friendship Liam had with the man was worth something.

Joel shoved him in again.

Yassen was in the room the next time Joel pulls him up.

Gasping around the gag, Alex felt himself shoved to the floor. There was a pause as Yassen knelt, and waited for Alex’s panic to subside into steady breathing.

“Did you think there wouldn’t be cameras?”

Alex flinched.

Yassen placed a hand under Alex’s chin and forced their eyes to meet. “I told you that if I needed to, I would hurt you. Did you doubt me?”

Alex didn’t answer. He couldn’t around the gag if he wanted to, but he had no words. Yassen Gregorovich was the head of security for an international arms dealer, and Alex had crossed him. This wasn’t an interrogation. Perhaps it would be soon, but for now it was only torture. Cruel, efficient, and purposeful. Yassen wanted to send a message, and Alex was receiving it now: _I warned you._

Yassen released Alex and stepped back. He gestured to the Nigerian.

“Again.”

The Nigerian hesitated. He looked at Alex, shuddering in a soaked shirt in the middle of a drafty room, and then back at the assassin.

“I don’t repeat myself.” Yassen spoke softly, but it was a command. Enobakhare nodded.

Dawn was breaking across the horizon, and the light filtering in the lone window when Yassen stopped the torture. Alex was sobbing, annoyed at himself for showing such weakness but destroyed by the hours of false drowning.

This time, the same as the last, Yassen waited until Alex’s cries subsided before speaking.

 “I’m giving you one chance. If you lie, I will know. If you are withholding information, I will know. Much of your activity yesterday was caught on camera. If you fill in the missing pieces, this will end.”

Yassen opened one of his desk drawers and pulled out a small switchblade, and a camera. “Nod if you understand.”

Alex nodded.

Yassen opened the camera and positioned it on the desk, pointing at Alex. He moved next to Alex, pulled the gag away from Alex’s skin, and cut it loose. The dull edge of the knife touched Alex’s cheek softly, then was gone.

Joel moved behind the camera and pressed a button, presumably the power button. Alex wondered where the tape was going. Or perhaps it was just to be kept and used in case of leverage. Here would be proof that a CIA agent had tried to make moves against Marvin Frobisher.

“What’s your name?” Yassen asked.

“Alex Rider.”

“Who do you work for?”

“The CIA.”

Yassen paused for a fraction of a second. “How old are you?”

Alex hesitated. If this tape was intended to blackmail the CIA, Alex’s age might be a final straw. At sixteen he was finally old enough to be in the military, legally, but what sort of first world intelligence service would press a sixteen-year-old into undercover work in a dangerous and remote corner of the world?

“Now,” Yassen said.

“Sixteen.” In the corner of the room Enobakhare stiffened slightly.

“Yesterday you snuck into an office and stole several files. We have video of you uploading them to a computer in another room. What files did you take?”

“I don’t know.” Yassen glanced at Joel, and the man stepped forward and grabbed Alex by the shoulders.

“I don’t know,” Alex repeated desperately. “I didn’t have time to check.”

Yassen held up a hand. Joel stops, released Alex and stepped back.  “They were documents on a flashdrive. I took it and uploaded it to a computer. I send the first documents to the CIA by email. I don’t know what was on any of them, I just uploaded as many as I could in lunchtime. I sent those files already. They have it now, you can’t do anything about it.”

“No,” Yassen agreed, and Alex heard a flash of anger in his voice. “Which flashdrive did you take? The office you broke into had several flashdrives where paper reports had been copied into digital files.”

“It was from 2003.”

“And where is that flashdrive now?”

“In the ceiling. I crawled through the space above the rooms to get around, and I left them where I went in.”

Yassen smiled darkly. “There is always some way that escapes detection. And you found ours.”

Alex closed his eyes. He could shrug, or brag, but the thought of drowning again was too awful.

“What were you looking for?”

“Something that would prove Marvin Frobisher is conducting illegal arms trade. Or that he is a murderer. Or that crimes follow where he goes.”

“Something that would indict Frobisher if put before an international court?” Yassen asked.

“Yeah.”

“Was that all you found?”

“It’s all I had time for.”

Yassen nodded, seeming to accept that was the whole truth. He pressed a button on the camera and closed its screen. He put it back into the drawer it had come from, along with the switchblade.

Joel regarded Alex. “You want us to do what we did to the Irishman?”  

Alex waited numbly for the decision. Yassen picked up Joel’s gun from the desk and handed it to the man.

“No,” Yassen said. “Keep him alive.”

Warm hands lifted him from the carpet. Alex realized he was freezing. His entire body had been soaked in cold water for the past few hours, and he’d only had thin nightclothes on to begin with. Enobakhare forced Alex in front of him, and directed him out of the building into the building that had gotten Alex into trouble in the first place.

Alex looked for the cameras. He didn’t have much hope of escape, but he had to try. He wondered if he could spot the ones that had caught him. None catch his eye. Either the first floor is not where the cameras caught him, or the cameras in use were too small or well hidden to be seen.

He was led into the basement, into a windowless room that smells like chemicals. A stack of blue plastic bins in on one side, with another brown carpet rolled into the corner.

“Wait,” Alex said, before his captor could leave. His voice came out harsher, and hoarser, than intended. Enobakhare paused.

“Can you untie my hands?” Alex asked, trying to keep an edge of pleading from his voice. “Or bring me a blanket, please.”

The Nigerian paused, uncertain. Alex shivered, half an act to try and convince the man, and half from bone deep cold. “How long were you spying on me?”

“Since a week after we came here. I thought they were wrong to be suspicious of you,” Enobakhare admitted.

“Did you get a pay raise for it? Spending your free time with a moody teenager?”

“I didn’t need a pay raise. I told you I liked you. I still do. Even now.”

Alex stared at the man. “You spent the morning torturing me.”

Enobakhare stared back. “You spent the last two months spying on us.”

Alex shivered. “Please.”

“You know, Alex, I think you'll survive.”

With a final click, the door closed, and Alex was alone.


	6. The Interview

Time passed in darkness. It had been early morning when Alex was woken that morning, and still morning when Enobakhare had locked him up. In the dark, windowless basement room Alex couldn’t see the light switch, and with his hands bound it wasn’t easy to feel around the wall until he found it.

_Yassen said he wouldn_ _’_ _t kill you_ , Alex told himself. He shivered. A much larger part of himself no longer believed the man. Yassen had recorded him after having him tortured for hours. Alex had betrayed his trust. _Trust? You_ _’_ _re a spy._ Fine. Yassen had spent a huge amount of effort to keep Alex figuratively tied up and out of trouble, and then Alex had managed to break into a locked office for secure information anyway.

Alex set his head against the wall and closed his eyes. If he wasn’t freezing, he could try to take a nap.

When the door opened and light streamed in, Alex found himself waking from a drifting state.

“Do you need the restroom?” Enobakhare asked. Hostility underlined his tone.

Alex nodded and awkwardly pushed himself to his feet. He turned his bound hands to the Nigerian. The man scoffed. “If I untie you, I’m just going to tie you back up afterwards.” Alex didn’t move, and the man began to pull on the ropes binding his hands.

“Can I ask something?” Alex asked. “What happened the other spy? The one here before me.”

Alex felt the ropes fall away from his wrists, and his shoulder was grabbed. “Why do you want to know?”

“I heard him screaming. Before there would have been time for him to even admit to being a spy.” Alex turned to gaze at the Nigerian as he was pushed into the empty basement hallway.

Enobakhare laughed. “Oh, he admitted to being a spy. It took a while, and he didn’t have all of his fingers at the end, but he eventually he told the truth.” Taking in Alex’s pale face, a corner of the man’s mouth turned upwards. “I wonder if you’ll face the same.”

“People will say anything if someone’s cutting off their fingers.” Alex glowered. “Doesn’t mean you’ll get anything useful.”

The older man stopped at a door and released the boy. “You have 2 minutes.”

Alex tried to ask what else had happened to the Irish spy on his way back to his prison. The Nigerian ignored his queries for a minute, and then responded with some of his own.

“You want to know what I wonder, kid?” Enobakhare questioned. “Why aren’t you home with your parents. Why do you have a British accent still, when I know you’re with the CIA? My mom would have killed me if I’d signed up to risk my life at 16.” The Nigerian leaned in conversationally. “Of course, she’d kill me now if I told her how I’m getting the money I send home.” His expression turned pinched and bitter. “You’re an idiot to make your parents worry for a spot of excitement.”

“I’ll answer your questions for dry clothes.”

Enobakhare turned them into the dark room where Alex had been kept and flicked the light switch on. “Wasn’t in my orders.”

“Maybe my answers will help your boss.” They wouldn’t.

Enobakhare picked up the rope that had been binding Alex’s wrists and bound them again.

At least there was a chance Alex could see this time. “Could you turn the lights off again? I want to take a nap.”

Enobakhare left the lights on.

-AR-

Alex was woken later with a kick to the side. “I thought you weren’t big on torturing a kid earlier,” Alex said. “I guess I was wrong.”

The Nigerian man towered over Alex.

 “I haven’t decided how I feel about you, Liam.”

“Alex,” Alex said quietly.

Enobakhare’s right hand tightened into a fist. “And what are you doing, with this ridiculous British accent? It’s good, but I know you’re American. You can drop it!” Alex took a step back.  Enobakhare’s mouth flickered. “Wait here.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Alex clenched and unclenched his fists, feeling the lack of give in the ropes binding him.

The Nigerian slammed the door closed and Alex heard the lock click. He sighed and sat up. Minutes later the door opened and Enobakhare returned. He tossed a blanket at Alex.

“Here’s your fucking blanket.” The man reached around the blanket to grab Alex and force him up. They went down the same hallway to the restroom wordlessly. Enobakhare pushed the young spy back to the room afterwards. Alex sat down on the blanket, half afraid the man was going to change his mind and take the only source of warmth away. Enobakhare turned to leave, then hesitated.

“Alex,” the man said. “The first spy we found – he was begging for death by the end. He was older, and from a few scars I’d reckon he’d been tortured before. I saw how you reacted before. I don’t think you’ll last a day.” Enobakhare left.

Alex couldn’t fall back asleep.

-AR-

“Fucks sake.” Enobakhare glared at Alex. “You can take a nap after torture but a few words from me and you don’t sleep?”

“What can I say—I’m talented.” Alex shoved his blanket away and stood up.

“I was being a jerk.” Enobakhare held a gun in his right hand. He hadn’t bothered with a weapon any of the other times he’d come to take Alex to the restroom.

“You’re more temperamental than a teenager,” Alex said. If he’d a bit more energy, he would try to make it sound like a joke. Now all he could do was wonder about Enobakhare’s change of tune. Perhaps he felt more apologetic about hurting a teenager than he’d initially let on, or perhaps he’d overcome his feeling of betrayal. Perhaps Alex was about to be led to more torture and that had prompted the change of tune. Alex’s stomach churned. How much more need for blood did Yassen have? Alex had watched him shoot a man for dropping a case once. Admittedly that case had been filled with a deadly airborne disease. But he wasn’t a man of forgiveness. If Yassen only wanted information, Alex would give it to him.

Enobakhare waved his hand around and Alex turned around. His hands were unbound and Alex flexed his hands, shaking them back to life.

“You didn’t need to hear about the other spy,” the Nigerian said. “I have no idea what’s going to happen to you. You might be fine.”

“Yeah, I feel great,” Alex replied. “Just need some coffee and I’ll be set.”

“Just…have courage. Tell Gregorovich everything he asks. If you survive, hug your parents hard, and don’t do this again.”

Alex stopped himself from another smart reply. If Enobakhare had decided to be as kind as he could to the teenager, there wasn’t much to be gained by pushing him away. If Alex ended up back in this room again tonight, he’d rather have a blanket than nothing. At least his misery had been relatively comfortable last night.

“Let’s go.”

With a gun prodding him forward, Alex led the way up the dim stairwell to the ground floor. A clock on the wall announced the time as 6:52. The hallway was quiet, except for them, and empty save for a janitors cart parked in the corner.

“Gregorovich’s office,” the Nigerian prompted.

_Of course._ Alex opened the door and led them in. His tormentor was setting up a tripod in the middle of the room.

“Here I am, reporting for work,” Alex muttered.

Yassen looked up. “Silence is always an option, little spy.”

Alex didn’t respond.  

Yassen turned behind him to his desk. Alex followed the movement and saw a gun resting on the desk.

He flinched. The movement was instinctual and a weakness.

Yassen paused. He looked almost amused. “You’re not here for me to kill you.” After a second’s pause, he added, “Not today, at any rate.” The Russian opened his desk drawer and withdrew the video camera he’d used yesterday. He attached it to the tripod. “How often did you contact your bosses?”

“Five times, over two months,” Alex said.

Yassen nodded in consideration. “The CIA sent men after you. They were worried when you hadn’t contacted them. How long ago did you reach out to them last?”

“I emailed them two weeks ago.”

“They sent two agents to the town. They were found and killed immediately.”

“They didn’t tell me they were sending anyone.” It might not have mattered, since Alex had not completed his mission on his own. He didn’t know that any of the information he’d found had been useful.

“Did they have a way? You hadn’t been in contact.” Yassen pointed to where Alex had worked for the past weeks. Where once there was a desk and filing boxes, now only a chair remained. “Take a seat.”

Alex sat, and Yassen turned the tripod to face him. Enobakhare moved in the background to be on the other side of the camera, outside of the video’s field of vision. The assassin pressed a button on the camera.

“When did you start working for the CIA?”

Alex closed his eyes. This information could be used to blackmail the CIA. If Yassen wanted to cast a wider net, he would then turn to questions about MI6.

A soft click signaled that the live recording was ended.

“You can answer my questions now, or I can hurt you and you will answer my questions anyway,” Yassen said.

Alex held his gaze. He believed the threats.

Yassen pressed the record button again. He repeated his question. “When did you start working for the CIA?”

 “I was fourteen the first time I worked for the CIA.” Alex kept his eyes directed at the lens. Whatever the purpose of this film, his face had already been shown. He had no reason to obscure the viewer’s view.

He didn’t need to look at Yassen to know the man was still looking at him. He didn’t want to look at the Nigerian to see his reaction to Alex’s confession.  

“What did you do?”

“I was finding out more information about a Russian General named Sarov. He wanted to detonate nuclear warheads in Russia.” Alex thought about his final moments with Sarov, about the man blowing open his own head. “He was mad. His son was dead, and he wanted to use me to remember his son. When I didn’t cooperate, he let his assistant try to kill me.”

“And he didn’t succeed.”

_Obviously not._ “In killing me or detonating hundreds of bombs? I think the second would make the news.”

Yassen switched the questioning. “Did the CIA know how old you were?”

Alex shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“What do you know?”

“They knew I was young. They had me pretend to be the son of two other agents: two adults. They were both killed in Skeleton Key, Central America.”

“Now you’re sixteen.”

“Yes,” Alex agreed. “I’ll be seventeen in a week.”

“How long have you been working for the CIA?”

Alex paused. “I signed up when I was sixteen. It’s legal.”

“You worked for them for the first time when you were fourteen.”

“That was the only time I worked for them before then.”

Yassen asked several more questions about the mission, and Alex answered them honestly. The truth was, he didn’t know much about the logistics of the mission. What he knew boiled down to Sarov’s insanity, Conrad’s murderous rage, and a submarine yard filled with abandoned warheads.

“Did the CIA pay you for this mission?”

“No.” Alex had received a lump payment from MI6 a year ago for ‘services rendered’. Technically that could have included some recompense from the CIA, but he doubted it. The sum had been a pittance anyway, according to Mr. Pleasure.

“Yet you had saved millions of lives.”

“I wasn’t doing it for the money.” Alex regretted the words as soon as he spoke. He knew without hesitation what the next question would be.

 “Why did you work for them?” Yassen shifted behind the camera.

Blackmail. “It sounded fun.” Alex raised his eyes from the camera lens to Yassen’s, wondering if the man believed him. Probably not. Perhaps he thought Alex had an innate sense of justice, but Yassen had seen the trouble Alex had wound up in countless times. Alex had known that these missions weren’t fun.

“Where were your parents?”

Alex felt more tired than the lack of sleep could justify. Yassen knew the answer to this question. What was he trying to do, paint Alex as a defenseless orphan? A victim of the state? He had been, although a victim of the British government, not the American.

“I was raised by my uncle. He wouldn’t have let me work for them.” Probably. “Then some bastard shot him.”

Yassen raised an eyebrow. “And the CIA approached you and offered a chance to provide cover to their agents. Out of nowhere.” It was a statement and a question, and Alex needed to lie for this question. The actual events – hiding from the Triads, MI6 telling him that he was getting a sunny vacation, polishing his American accent – would only open a larger can of worms. Would only get Alex in bigger trouble if and when this video got back to his superiors.

“Basically.” Before another question could be asked, Alex clarified. “I don’t know how they picked me, or found out about me, I don’t know. I didn’t apply for a job and I didn’t ask them. Maybe they knew my family or I wrote an essay about patriotism at school that they picked up, or they just drew a random name. I don’t know.”

That fiction was obviously a lie, but Yassen didn’t press.

“Did they tell you the dangers?”

No. Never. Not until Alex had become involved with SCORPIA, and even then the dangers had been glossed over.

Alex let his silence speak for itself. He couldn’t answer this question with a polite fiction. There was no answer he could give that would excuse the CIA for using a 14-year-old to do their dirty work. If the agents involved had warned Alex of the dangers, that implied they knew how dangerous this mission was and still sent a child. If they didn’t, they were callously sending a child into a lions’ den.

“Why didn’t you work for them again?”

Shrugging, Alex sat back. “I have no idea.”

Yassen nodded in acceptance and turned the camera off. Interview over.

Alex looked around the quiet room. Enobakhare was staring at Alex with apparent incredulity. At least it wasn’t outright disbelief.

“What are you going to do with these?” Alex asked.

Yassen considered him. “I already sent the first one to the CIA. Along with pictures of the agents they had sent after you.”

Alex wondered if they were agents he knew. Probably not. Most of the people he’d met weren’t field agents. “What about this one?”

Yassen looked at the Nigerian. “Put him back in the basement. Make sure he’s fed.”

“They aren’t going to pay a ransom,” Alex said. “If you were trying to blackmail them for me back, it won’t work.” The assassin ignored him. He began to type into his phone.

Enobakhare pointed his gun at him. “Let’s go.”

-AR-

Alex managed to fall into a restless sleep after breakfast. He woke several times with a sense of panic, only to find himself in an empty room. After the fifth waking fit, Alex resigned himself to staying awake. The thoughts passing through his head were best described as horrific. Enobakhare may now regret telling Alex about what had happened to Connor, but he had. How far would Yassen take this? Alex had gone along with every question asked. Surely that was enough.  

A click at the door told Alex it was time to fetch him again. He looked up, expecting the Nigerian.

“Decided to stage my escape yourself?” Alex asked.

Yassen’s expression gave nothing away. “Follow me.”

The Russian led them out of the building and onto the path to the executive building. Alex stared around at the few people he saw walking about. He wondered how many of them, if any, had the idea that he was a prisoner.

They took the stairs to the third floor. Three men with semiautomatic pistols were stationed outside a doorway on the distant end of the hall. Yassen led the way without looking back to see if Alex was following. Alex folded his arms together and followed into a middle-sized room, with a view of the coast in the distance. Two chairs were set up on opposing sides of the table. One of the chairs was occupied by a middle-aged man with chestnut hair.

Alex recognized the man instantly. He’d seen him in photographs. Two or three times he’d seen him in the distance. This was the man he’d been sent to investigate. The multimillionaire weapons dealer who would work with anyone that could pay. Marvin Frobisher.

Yassen stood by the door. Alex took the empty seat. Could one mission go by without having to confront a power-hungry megalomaniac?

“Who are you?” Frobisher asked. Honestly, a fair question.

“His name is Alex Rider,” Yassen supplied. “He works for American intelligence.” Marvin Frobisher eyed Alex with renowned interest. “He was found sneaking through your offices and sending files to the CIA. Nothing harmful to you, I believe.”

“Anything on our current dealings?”

Yassen looked at Alex.

“No,” Alex admitted.

“What were you looking for?” Frobisher asked.

“Specifically, a deal with Iran. But any wrong doing in general. They got Al Capone on taxes,” Alex said.

“The CIA sent him in under cover, as an older British convict.” Yassen eyed Alex. “He’s sixteen. The Americans have been using him since he was 14. I have a taped confession of an earlier mission Alex did. If the CIA sends another agent after you, we will release the recordings of Alex to the news. It would cause a scandal. If they want to avoid the inquiries, they will cease their investigations into you and your firm.”

“You tortured me for that information,” Alex said. “I would have said anything to make it stop.” He stared at Yassen, waiting for a rebuttal. His heart raced. Alex knew the name of the person who had him tortured, and if they released this information he wouldn’t be too shy to name Yassen. “And you’re on watchlists. You’re a hired killer. If anyone knew that you were working security here, it could start an investigation on why a businessman was hiring a killer to do this job.” Alex turned to address Frobisher. “Nobody would believe you. The CIA would deny everything; I would deny everything. And INTERPOL would finally have proof that you were involved in shady dealings. You’re a multimillionaire and you didn’t run a background check on your head of security? You’ll be on the news more than me.”

Yassen nodded. He addressed Frobisher. “My contract ends in two months. If I am not here anymore, deny that I was involved. Perhaps some questions would be asked, but all you need to do is stay silent.” Yassen surveyed Alex. “You can deny what you want, but that will not stop your life from being exposed. Reporters and child advocates will investigate. Your face will be on the news. The CIA would need to confirm or deny this tape, and either move would be a mistake.”

Frobisher laughed. “Dear god, boy, I hope for your sake your bosses in Langley and DC decide to stop investigating me.”

Alex thought of the journalist who had tried to reveal Alex’s work for MI6 to the press. MI6 had taken care of him, whatever that meant. MI6 would do everything in their power to stop this case from reaching the news. If the videos were bad for the CIA, they were worse for MI6. A lot worse.

Alex looked at Yassen. This wouldn’t work. Yassen had to know this wouldn’t work. Frobisher could release the tapes of Alex confessing to his spying and the CIA and MI6 would only cover it up. People would be blackmailed, lives would be upturned, but Alex’s childhood would be kept under wraps.

Frobisher couldn’t know that. Yassen had never said that he knew who Alex was, or that Alex had spied for far longer than one mission at the age of 14. There hadn’t been any mention of MI6, or more than one case that Alex had worked before the age of 16. And while Alex working as a spy at 16 could be a scandal, it was legal.

So Frobisher had no way of knowing how far certain agencies would go to keep Alex’s life hidden from the public. To Frobisher, the threat of releasing the tapes was real. And it was real – the CIA would not _want_ to scramble to hide everything Alex had done two years ago. They may even avoid Frobisher for a while. Or perhaps they would leave Frobisher alone, and let MI6 or another agency pursue Frobisher. Perhaps Yassen’s idea would work.

Still, Alex didn’t like it. They had him on tape. They were threatening to destroy his life!

“This won’t work,” Alex insisted. “It’s obvious I was tortured, and I’ll come forward and say that. I’m dripping wet in the first video. I have rope marks around my wrist in the second. Even if everyone believes you, that I’m a spy and worked for the CIA at 14, you’ll still have to say why your security tortured and tied up a teenager. Someone will go after you. The news isn’t going to ignore half of this story.”

Yassen shrugged. “Deny you’re involved. The CIA will try to focus the attention on who made the video, but that cannot be proven. If Alex was free to talk he could blame you, but he has no proof, and I doubt the CIA would allow him to talk anyway.”

“It will come back to you!” Alex insisted.

“A rogue, third party security consultant was carried away. He had since been fired, and I don’t know how to track him down,” Frobisher said.

“It won’t come to that,” Yassen disagreed. “There is no proof this company was involved, and the CIA won’t reveal their investigations publicly. There may be rumors that you were involved, but will that deter your investors or buyers?”

Frobisher laughed. Alex frowned. Another ruthless psychopath who didn’t care about anything but personal profit. Frobisher had earned his reputation for a reason. “Fine. Send the threat to the CIA.” Frobisher stood up. “And kill the spy. Dump his body.”

Alex turned to Yassen. This entire conversation Alex had been talking back as if he was going to be alive to deny charges. Frobisher had no benefit to letting Alex live. He was a threat. He could name Yassen as the man who worked for Frobisher and the man who’d had Alex tortured.

“No,” Yassen said. “The threat will work better if he is alive.”

There was a hard glint in Frobisher’s eyes as he examined the boy. “Why?”

“If a video is released of a dead boy, there is no proof that the spy actually works for the CIA. This way, Alex will return to America, and people can say they’ve seen him near the CIA headquarters. There will be clear links between Alex and American government. And his agency will lose their youngest spy, and one with a lot of potential.”

“He knows who you are. He could bring trouble into your life,” Frobisher pointed out.

Yassen met Alex’s eyes. His gaze was steady. “It would be better if he is alive.”

Frobisher twisted a ring on his right hand. He tilted his head. Alex felt lightheaded.

“I’ll consider it,” Frobisher said. “Keep him alive, for now.”


End file.
